A Jerusalem district court today upheld the administrative arrest of Rabbi Meir Kahane, leader of the ultra-nationalist “Koch” movement, and an associate, Baruch Green, who were jailed on orders of the Defense Ministry last Tuesday for allegedly planning “vigilant” action against Arabs on the West Bank.
The case is the first in which administrative detention–imprisonment without trial–was applied by Israeli authorities against Jewish citizens of Israel. The State sentenced Kahane and Green to six months but judge Asher Felix Landou, president of the court, reduced the term to three months, subject to review after that period. He also allowed the accused the right of appeal.
The Defense Ministry had demanded that Kahane be incarcerated at the Shatta maximum security prison. According to press reports, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren asked a senior Cabinet minister to intervene to have Kahane sent, instead, to a less harsh facility in the Jordan Volley.
The Chief Rabbi reportedly acted because he feared that Kahane, founder and one-time leader of the Jewish Defense League in the U.S., would be injured by Arab inmates of the Shatta prison. Goren, however, denied that he had intervened in the matter. “I merely asked that he be given a fair trial,” he said.
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