The Public Defender’s Office asked the Tel Aviv District Court, sitting as a Court for Administrative Affairs, on Thursday to urgently stop the Israel Prison Service from releasing further footage of Agam Tsarafi, a 19-year-old charged in the murder of her former boyfriend, Benyahu Razi.
The request followed the circulation of a video showing Tsarafi handcuffed and bent forward as masked prison officers escorted her through a detention facility. Public defender Roi Politi argued that its publication humiliated a defendant who has not been convicted and could harm her right to a fair trial. The court has not ruled on the request.
Razi, 19, was fatally stabbed in a Jerusalem apartment in July. Prosecutors allege that Tsarafi and Shilat Huta helped arrange an attack on him after a dispute, and that four minors carried it out. Tsarafi, Huta and the four minors face intentional murder charges. Linor Sasson, the mother of one of the minors, is charged with assisting after the killing and obstructing the investigation.
Politi filed a petition on Monday challenging Tsarafi’s detention conditions. In Thursday’s update, he said she was being held separately from other detainees and barred from visits and most phone calls until October 1, when her conditions are due to be reviewed. The court had initially given the Prison Service until Wednesday, September 23, to respond.
After the video appeared on Wednesday, Politi asked the court to hold a hearing on Thursday or Friday, identify who authorized its release, and order the Prison Service to stop releasing footage or unattributed comments about Tsarafi. He argued that publishing the video violated her privacy.
Ben-Gvir defends IPS treatment of Tsarafi
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir defended the Prison Service’s treatment of Tsarafi in a statement responding to the public defender’s criticism. He alleged that she had disrupted order and mistreated other inmates and prison staff, and said her transfer to the Abu Kabir detention facility was carried out according to law.
The dispute also surfaced Thursday at the Jerusalem District Court, where Tsarafi and Huta appeared by video conference in proceedings over the criminal charges. Politi told Judge Eli Abravanel that earlier claims in the case had portrayed Tsarafi as a “black widow” waiting to strike.
Because the people inside the apartment were minors, he argued, the court had not heard a full account of what happened. Instead, he said, a “poison machine” had been created against the two women.
Prisoner reportedly moved to detention facility, held alone without visits
Politi said Tsarafi had been moved to another detention facility and held alone in a cell “with cockroaches and mice,” without visits or phone calls. He described the filmed search of her cell as an escalation. “If this continues, Your Honor will have no one left to try,” he warned.
Abravanel said the hearing was not the forum for those complaints, and returned the discussion to the defendants’ response to the charges.
The defense sought more time to respond, citing the volume of evidence and material it said it was still awaiting, including a confidentiality certificate and an opinion from the L. Greenberg Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir. The Jerusalem court set the next hearing for November 12 at 10 a.m.