Four nabbed in anti-autopsy protest

Police arrest haredi men holding protest near Abu Kabir over probe into murder of Jerusalem man.

By ABE SELIG, JPOST.COM STAFF
haredim protest jerusalem 248 88 (photo credit: Channel 2)
haredim protest jerusalem 248 88
(photo credit: Channel 2)
Police on Monday arrested four haredi men who were demonstrating outside the Abu Kabir Forensics Institute in protest of the intention to carry out an autopsy on the body of a Jewish man who was murdered in Jerusalem on Sunday night. The men were arrested and taken for questioning after blocking the road and attacking policemen. The 50-year-old murder victim was stabbed to death inside a hostel in the capital's Kerem Avraham neighborhood near Geula after an apparent argument with a young Palestinian from the West Bank, police said. The perpetrator, who police had identified as a 23-year-old hostel employee, fled the scene on Tzefania Street after the attack, in which he stabbed the man multiple times. He was caught by Border Police some two hours later in Azariya, next to Ma'aleh Adumim. A Magen David Adom team that arrived at the scene of the attack attempted to resuscitate the victim, who was in critical condition, but he succumbed to his wounds and was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. Police said the two men had been arguing since the morning over money, and therefore had begun investigating the incident as a criminal case. Police investigators who arrived at the scene of the fatal stabbing were pelted with stones by haredim protesting the planned autopsy. Reinforcements were called in to disperse the rioters. A haredi demonstrator and eight police officers were lightly wounded during riots in Jerusalem's Mea She'arim and Geula neighborhoods over the planned autopsy, as well as over the extended remand of 16 haredim arrested during weekend disturbances in Jerusalem over the Saturday opening of the Carta parking lot. The haredi demonstrators hurled stones at police, who responded by firing stun grenades. On the capital's David Yelin Street, a police car was torched by haredim. No one was wounded. While the scene of the attack is near the area where recent haredi protests have become a weekly occurrence, often resulting in violence, the neighborhood as a whole is quiet and homicides are extremely rare. The attack also came on the heels of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's statements Sunday that he was "not willing to accept any kind of terrorism," and that he considered violence and bullying to be a sort of internal terrorism. In a joint interview with Army Radio and Israel Radio earlier Sunday, during a special day of broadcasts dedicated to battling violence, the prime minister said his government would follow a policy of "zero tolerance to violence, both verbal and physical," and vowed to change the current situation.