Court dismisses flotilla petitions

Beinish: "The soldiers responded in order to defend their lives."

By JPOST.COM STAFF
dorit beinisch 311 Ariel Jerozolimski (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
dorit beinisch 311 Ariel Jerozolimski
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
The High Court of Justice rejected both leftist and rightist groups’ petitions regarding this week’s IDF flotilla raid on Thursday.
The hearing, which began late on Wednesday afternoon, involved six petitions. Three demanded information on the whereabouts of all or some of the passengers, all of whom had been brought to Ashdod. The other three asked the court to overrule Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein’s decision to halt the police investigation of Monday’s events on the Turkish passenger ship, Mavi Marmara.
Court President Dorit Beinisch said she found no basis for interfering with the attorney-general’s deportation of the foreign activists taken into custody on the ships.
The court came out in support of the IDF’s actions on the MaviMarmara, saying, “The soldiers were forced to respond inorder to defend their lives. Unfortunately, the action ended, as wasnot to be expected, with the loss of lives. Nine people were killed andsoldiers and flotilla participants were wounded.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Weinstein informed the High Court that he hadaccepted a recommendation from the security cabinet to allow all of thepassengers to leave the country.
“I reached this decision,” he told the court, “after I took intoconsideration, on the one hand, the overall public interest inenforcing the law, and, on the other hand, the recommendation of thepolitical echelon, which was based, among other things, on the decisionof the security cabinet of June 1, which called for the immediaterelease of all the civilians who had arrived on the flotilla, and onrequests from foreign countries and international organizations.