Pearlman: Shin Bet told me to kill Salah

Jewish terror suspect held over four murders gives tapes to Channel 2.

Pearlman 311 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Pearlman 311
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Audio recordings of an alleged Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) agent posing as a far-right extremist and urging alleged Jewish terrorist Haim Pearlman to murder the head of the Islamic Movement’s Northern Branch, Raed Salah, were aired on Channel 2 news on Thursday night.
The recordings were made available by Pearlman two days before his arrest on Tuesday, on the condition that they would be broadcast following his arrest. Pearlman said the recordings were made sometime in the last few months.
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“We’ll send Salah to the next world,” a voice can be heard saying in one recording.
“Make the driver [of Salah’s vehicle] disappear...
Plant an explosive in the car, that’s the easiest,” the man adds.
Pearlman is heard expressing reluctance to cooperate, and airing concerns about going to jail.
“Why are you worried about getting in trouble?” the man asks. “You can do a ‘bang bang’ like in the Bar Noar,” the man added, referring to the name of the gay youth club targeted by a gunman in Tel Aviv in 2009, an attack that left two dead.
“Let’s start a movement that gets things done... Are you a man or not?” the man said.
Responding to the recordings, a security source told The Jerusalem Post, “It is important to understand the context of this story. This entire procedure was an intelligence gathering effort aimed at examining suspicions we had regarding Pearlman’s role in a series of murders.
This was not incitement.”
The source said that the operation was backed by an additional “element,” referring to state prosecutors.
“We wanted to create a mechanism through which we could receive information, which would indicate whether Pearlman was linked to the murders,” he said.
Earlier on Thursday, Pearlman, who is suspected of four murders and seven attempted murders, was remanded in custody until July 22 by the Petah Tikva District Court.
The suspect, who is associated with the outlawed Kahane Chai movement, was arrested on Tuesday night by Jerusalem Police and the Shin Bet.
During the remand hearing, an officer from the Jerusalem Police District Central Unit said Pearlman was suspected of a series of deadly stabbings of Arabs from 1998 to 2004. The officer handed the presiding judge a classified report that he said contained evidence linking Pearlman to the crimes.
The hearing was held in Pearlman’s absence as he has been forbidden to meet with his lawyer Adi Keidar since his arrest. Pearlman was later taken in for a separate hearing in a different courtroom, where he was informed of the result of his remand hearing.
Pearlman’s wife Keren came into the courtroom on Thursday carrying a copy of a pamphlet written by former leader of the far-right Kahane Chai party Noam Federman called “Know Your Rights,” which deals with the rights of citizens while under investigation by the police or Shin Bet.
At one point during the hearing, she caught a glimpse of her husband as a door to an adjacent part of the courthouse opened and yelled “Haim,” before rising and yelling his name once more as she left the room.
A number of Pearlman’s supporters also came to the courthouse and sat in the back row during the hearing.
Keidar said on Thursday that the charges against Pearlman represented “a very severe case of activation [of Pearlman] by the Shin Bet under unacceptable conditions.”
He said the security services were framing Pearlman.
Keidar works with the Honenu organization, a group that provides legal assistance to Israeli Jews suspected of involvement in violent attacks on Arabs. He alleged that the Shin Bet hounded Pearlman and “exploited his economic distress in order to link him to the suspicions.”
Keidar told the Post that police had no concrete evidence against his client, and that the entire case hinged on a phone conversation between Pearlman and Shin Bet agents.
“They have no physical evidence; if he doesn’t say anything, he’ll go home,” Keidar said.
During the hearing, the police representative dismissed outright all of the defense’s claims that the Shin Bet framed Pearlman.
This past April, Pearlman was one of two people arrested for hanging “Wanted” posters of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. He was not charged following that arrest.