MK to High Court: Ya’alon, A-G must act in Duma case

Meretz’s Esawi Frej demands legal steps against murderers

By YONAH JEREMY BOB
the Dawabsha house which was set on fire in a suspected attack by Jewish extremists in Duma. (photo credit: AMMAR AWAD / REUTERS)
the Dawabsha house which was set on fire in a suspected attack by Jewish extremists in Duma.
(photo credit: AMMAR AWAD / REUTERS)
MK Esawi Frej (Meretz) on Tuesday filed a petition with the High Court of Justice against Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Attorney- General Yehuda Weinstein, demanding they take “legal steps against the Dawabsha family’s murderers.”
Three members of the family died in a July 31 arson attack on their home in Duma, a small community near Nablus in Samaria.
Frej argued that Ya’alon and Weinstein were not taking “the necessary legal steps against the murderers of the Dawabsha family, in order not to expose intelligence sources.”
He called the absence of prosecutions of the murderers “illegal, unreasonable, extremely disproportionate, and severely discriminative,” since “the identities of the killers are known to the authorities.”
The Meretz MK noted in the petition that on September 9, five weeks after the murder, the defense minister announced that “the security systems know who is responsible for the terror attack in which the Dawabsha family house in Duma was set on fire, but are reluctant to put them on trial in order not to expose intelligence sources.”
Other statements have indicated that the state has not moved forward with legal prosecutions because it lacks sufficient evidence that would be admissible in court, but that some of the activists under administrative detention since August might be suspects.
Several parties have slammed the state for the prolonged administrative detention of three activists, but the government, with support from Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Bayit Yehudi), has rebuffed the criticism.