Mounted "policeman" convicted of violence
Published by Avi Green on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 9:40 AM.
An important judgment has been reached in the Amona horror:
(IsraelNN.com) Historic justice: The Jerusalem Magistrates Court has convicted a police horseman of purposely trampling a participant at the Amona destruction in early 2006.Challenging question: will Edry be sentenced to a prison term? Because that's what he deserves - jail time and ostricization by the wider public (by that, I mean that he should be banned from every resturant, amusement park, department store, stuff like that).
The case is one of the most famous incidents in the violent destruction of nine homes in the neighborhood of Amona, just above Ofra in the Binyamin region north of Jerusalem. It is well-known because of the famous photo and video clip showing the trampling, and because the victim was none other than the original founder of Ofra and a member of the famous Jewish "underground" of the 1980's, Yehuda Etzion.
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Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman ruled that, “The defendant did not attempt to prevent the complainant from being hurt; he did not turn his horse away or try to stop it on time. If he did not want to hurt the complainant, he would not have galloped towards him, or would have stopped before he reached him. Whether it was done purposely or with apathy towards the result, the result was foreseeable and inevitable.”
The dispersal of protests, the judge wrote, “sometimes requires the use of forceful means… including horses… and sometimes there are injuries… In our case, the evidence shows that the actions of the defendant comprised an unreasonable use of force. The protestors were not violent; the actions were not taken directly for the purpose of evacuating people holing themselves up in the outpost… [The protestors] were not attacking policemen, but rather standing and talking. It was not a large group, but rather individuals. They were not ‘wild’ youngsters, but rather a relatively older adult who was standing there.”
The convicted mounted policeman, David Edry, of the Jerusalem Police District, was indicted two months after the incident for having purposely trampled Etzion. The Police Bureau for Investigation of Policemen submitted the indictment, which stated, "Edry spurred on his horse and galloped towards Yehuda Etzion, who was talking at that time with [Yesha Council member] Adi Mintz. Edry caused the horse to gallop towards where Etzion was standing, at a pace faster than would be considered reasonable, hit him with the horse and knocked him to the ground, went over him and trampled him under the horse's legs."
As a result, the indictment states, Etzion "hit his head on the ground, and was caused many bruises on his entire body, including internal bleeding in his right foot and a cut in his skull... Edry attacked Etzion illegally and caused him genuine injury." Etzion, who received 23,000 shekels in damages from the State in the past, said he continued to feel pain for a full month after the incident, and was "convinced that the attack was purposeful."
The sentence will be handed down at a later date.
Labels: Israel
