Haaretz reporter Gidi Weitz was arrested by Tel Aviv District Police officers after introducing himself as a journalist and examining why they were being questioned as a worker at a construction site.
The cause was "interference with a police officer in the performance of his duties."
Weitz was finally released without being questioned.
Last night (Monday), Weitz noticed two interrogating patrol officers operating at a construction site near his home in central Tel Aviv.
Weitz, who knew Hapoel, asked the policeman, "What's the matter?"
The policeman called him and threatened to give him a report of standing on the road. Weitz identified himself as a journalist, but he did not have a certificate about him. the place.
Weitz refused, claiming to police he was a journalist performing his job.
In response, the police arrested him by force, handcuffed him, put him in a cell phone and took his cell phone away from him.
One of the officers even told a couple of neighbors who were standing nearby and documented the incident: "We have another place in the car."
When they arrived at the Tel Aviv Heart Police Station, the police continued their degrading behavior towards him, conducted a physical search on him, emptied his pockets, took off his shoelaces and he was taken into the detention cell.
Only after an order from the station commander was it decided to release him immediately from detention and without any interrogation.
The Israel Police responded: "Following a report received at the police station about a suspicious person, a mobile phone was sent to the scene. Palestinians. The police asked the citizen to stay away and after addressing the two detainees with questions, the police informed him of his arrest for interfering with a police officer in the performance of his duties. The citizen was brought to the station and released unconditionally.
The journalists' organization published a post in response that says that "the organization takes the incident in which Haaretz journalist Gidi Weitz was arrested on false pretenses very seriously, after identifying himself to the police as a journalist. The unbearable ease with which a person can be arrested "We demand that the Commissioner of Police of Israel investigate the incident in question and clarify the manner in which the police conduct themselves in front of journalists."
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