Nine Israelis—soldiers, police officers and a civilian—have been detained on charges of beating a Palestinian who was suspected of having sympathy for Hamas.
The civilian suspect in the case was named by the Israel Hayom daily on Tuesday as Sa’ar Ofir, previously suspected of murdering a member of Hamas’s elite Nukhba Force that led the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.
According to the charges, made public on Tuesday after a months-long undercover investigation into the August incident, the civilian—working together with four Israel Defense Forces troops, three police volunteers and a suspended police officer—moved to arrest a Palestinian suspect in the Wadi Ouja (aka Wadi Auja) area, in the Binyamin region of southern Samaria.
According to Ofir, they carried out the arrest after they saw Hamas terrorist propaganda on the lock screen of the Arab suspect’s phone.
The Israeli suspects allegedly put the Arab in their vehicle, drove him to an isolated area and punched him. The nine men also stand accused of abandoning the bleeding Palestinian.
Unnamed Israeli security officials told Ynet that there is no confirmation of the Palestinian’s alleged ties to Hamas or other terrorist organizations.
The civilian suspects were brought to the Rishon LeZion Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday to extend their detention. Meanwhile, the IDF troops appeared in military court for a hearing on the extension of their arrest.
The Israel Police said in a statement, “After the files of the investigation are submitted [to the court], we will consider the police officer’s case for disciplinary measures. As for the volunteers, upon learning of the incident, they were removed from their volunteer work in the police.”
Israeli Authorities are expected to close the Oct. 7 murder investigation against Ofir and two co-defendants soon due to a lack of evidence and the unique circumstances of that day, Kan News reported last month.
Ofir met up with Roy Yifrah and Yisrael Biton after they traveled to the northwestern Negev to fight Hamas terrorists on the morning of Oct. 7, 2023. Prosecutors have claimed the three men subsequently detained a Nukhba Force terrorist, questioned him and executed him.
The body of the armed Palestinian terrorist was allegedly discovered in Israel’s Sha’ar HaNegev region, near the border with northeastern Gaza.
Defense lawyers have said the suspects deny all charges, stressing that their clients risked their lives to save civilians and are being prosecuted for killing a terrorist operative who took part in the Hamas massacre.
Some 6,000 terrorists from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Fatah, and unaffiliated Palestinian “civilians,” infiltrated the Jewish state during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre. Israel’s security forces killed approximately a thousand of the terrorists and captured many others.
