IDF court releases five suspected of sodomizing terrorist to house arrest
On Sunday, the IDF court had granted the IDF prosecution's request to extend until Tuesday the detentions of the five prison guards.
An IDF Court on Tuesday ordered the release to house arrest of five IDF Sde Teiman prison guards suspected of sodomy against a Palestinian detainee-suspected terrorist.
Further, the court ordered that they all remain under house arrest at least until August 22, pending a potential social worker evaluation and the IDF investigators completing their probe into the matter.
In addition, the court noted that the IDF prosecution had committed to start transferring larger amounts of its evidence against the guards to their defense lawyers.
On Sunday, the IDF court had granted the IDF prosecution's request to extend until Tuesday the detentions of the five prison guards.
At the same time, the IDF prosecution had already said that it would not oppose starting a social worker evaluation process of the prison guards for the possibility of releasing them to house arrest or some other situation short of full detention.
The fact that the IDF prosecution took that position on Sunday had already suggested that it was close to completing key aspects of its investigation and possibly even closer to filing indictments.
On July 29, 10 guards were arrested for a mix of alleged sodomy and beatings. Two were quickly released and three more were released some days later after their detention was initially extended by an IDF pretrial court.
Testimonies and witness statements
Since then, the remaining five suspect prison guards’ detention has been extended several times.
Multiple times the IDF pretrial court and even once the IDF appeals court have ruled in favor of the prosecution and alluded to the case being much stronger than has been leaked to the public to date.
The Jerusalem Post understands that some of the evidence includes a majority of the medical reports and medical experts’ testimony as well as video footage of aspects of the alleged torture.
The defense has noted that at least two of the medical reports are ambiguous about what caused the physical harm to the Palestinian detainee’s rectum.
The second of these reports from Chen Kugel, chief of the State Forensics Institute, could be potentially more damaging to the prosecution's case.
On the flip side, Kugel said that the ambiguity came from the fact that he neither got to see photographic evidence nor did he get to examine the detainee, whereas some of the pro-prosecution medical reports came from medical experts who examined the detainee.
It was unclear whether there was photographic evidence of the detainee's rectum, but sources indicated there was no photographic evidence of the detainees' frontal private areas and that they did not know why this was.
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