The IDF Prosecution on Thursday asked the IDF court to extend the house arrest of five IDF Sde Teiman prison guards suspected of sodomy against a Palestinian detainee-suspected terrorist until at least September 5.
On August 13, an IDF Court ordered the release to house arrest of the five IDF Sde Teiman prison guards after they had been detained since July 29.
As part of the same ruling, the court ordered that they all remain under house arrest at least until August 22, pending a potential social worker evaluation and the IDF investigators completing their probe into the matter.
The defense plans to request that the court end the house arrest or, at least, in various ways, make the conditions more lenient.
On Thursday, the IDF Prosecution also announced that its probe into the five suspects may conclude as early as this weekend.
Already, by the start of next week, the IDF Prosecution said it would start transferring more evidence of its case to the defense and would offer the defense an opportunity for a pre-indictment hearing.
On July 29, 10 guards were arrested for a mix of alleged sodomy and beatings. Two were quickly released and three more were released some days later after their detention was initially extended by an IDF pretrial court.
Since then, the remaining five suspect prison guards’ detention was extended several times until August 13.
Case is stronger than has been leaked to the public
Multiple times, the IDF pretrial court and even once the IDF appeals court have ruled in favor of the prosecution and alluded to the case being much stronger than has been leaked to the public to date.
The Jerusalem Post understands that some of the evidence includes a majority of the medical reports and medical experts’ testimony, as well as video footage of aspects of the alleged torture.
The defense has noted that at least two of the medical reports are ambiguous about what caused the physical harm to the Palestinian detainee’s rectum.
The second of these reports from Chen Kugel, chief of the State Forensics Institute, could be potentially more damaging to the prosecution’s case.
On the flip side, Kugel said that the ambiguity came from the fact that he neither got to see photographic evidence nor did he get to examine the detainee, whereas some of the pro-prosecution medical reports came from medical experts who examined the detainee.
It was unclear whether there was photographic evidence of the detainee’s rectum, but sources indicated there was no photographic evidence of the detainee’s frontal private areas and that they did not know why this was.