A
little over six months after she and 11 others were arrested in a Tel Aviv
protest that quickly spiraled out of control, J14 protest leader Daphni Leef is
set to face charges of using violence to prevent arrest, obstructing a police
officer, and taking part in a disturbance in the Tel Aviv Magistrate's court on
Monday.
The indictment, originally presented on November 1st, 2012,
alleges that Leef and hundreds of other protesters began attacking police and
municipal workers who came to break up an illegal protest they were holding on
Rothschild Boulevard.
The indictment, which will be read on Monday
morning, alleges that while Leef was being arrested other protesters began
fighting attacking and disturbing police in an attempt to free her, and that
Leef herself sat on the ground in order to prevent them from taking her away, an
act that severely complicated the police work.
Leef and other protesters,
for their part, accused police of using violence and excessive force in breaking
up the protest. The protest was followed the next night by a protest march in
Tel Aviv during which some demonstrators broke bank windows and dozens were
arrested, in what was then seen as the beginning of a new, more heated version
of the social justice movement of the previous summer.
Leef could not be
reached Sunday night, but in a message on her Twitter on Monday she wrote “an
indictment?? they're presenting an indictment against me??”