Securing Judges Following The Recent Violent Attempts

Posted On 27.06.2012

In recent years, since the assassination of associate justice Adi Azar, it seems as if the social taboo surrounding the need to vouch for the well being of judicial appointees has been completely trampled. Murders, threats and other severe acts designed to influence the results of an ongoing trial became a routine. The recent incident in which a fragmentation grenade was thrown at the house of the Petah Tikva's Writ of Execution's Registrar General is a case in point.

The tendency to try and influence the outcome of a given trial, has increased significantly in many countries such as for example Italy and The United States, in which files on every person linked to a trial are prepared in advance, in order to detect his/her Achilles heel, preventing them from cooperating with the persecution.

I suppose that the police will surely figure out the identity and the motive of the person who threw the grenade. However, this incident and those it followed, must serve as an alerting sign for the Israeli security forces and the people in charge of securing the judges in The State of Israel.

Active Intelligence and Security

First, the court must use an intelligence and investigations squad that will be able to track down potential threats in highly sensitive cases involving heads of Israeli top crime syndicates. The law enforcement agencies are to assume a more active role in terms of judge security, not having to wait for a grenade to harm the judge and his/her family.

Furthermore, I have no doubt that the registrar in question dealt with a case involving a crime family, that thought throwing a grenade at her house will help clarify their position as to her activities. Preventive visible and undercover security would have obviously helped.

Not a threat – an act

Make no mistake about it, once the people behind this attack decided to use a Frag grenade and not a smoke grenade, the message was clear: "We are here to hurt you". Most commonly, the first acts of deterrence involve the use of some other type of grenades for quite a different message: "Back off the case or else…" This incident however showcases a clear and decisive intent to harm someone and therefore the police must already be prepared for a hit man trying to hurt the judge yet again, or rather someone else having to do with the specifically problematic case.

The Registrar General whose house became a target must be tightly secured using both visible and undercover security forces, accompanying both her and her family anywhere. In addition, her house is ought to be surrounded with security cameras, providing the guards with "eyes" in every corner, including the most remote ones.

In conclusion, the police's intelligence gathering branch must also become an integral part of the investigation, figuring out which of the cases handled by the Registrar General is in fact the problematic one. Throwing a Frag grenade at a person's house costs a lot of money (almost as ordering a hit on someone) and so the motives are clear, someone has a lot to lose.



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