Yesh Din renews complaint on IDF probes

By YAAKOV KATZ
The Yesh Din - Volunteers for Human Rights NGO restated Thursday even after an IDF rebuttal that not enough probes into soldier conduct in the territories lead to indictments. Yesh Din released a report Tuesday claiming a mere 6 percent of Military Police investigations into IDF conduct in the territories in the past seven years produced indictments. In response, the army accused Yesh Din of withholding statistics that the IDF Spokesman's Office had provided the group showing that in fact, over the past two years close to half of investigations opened against soldiers were followed up with reports by the JAG. Yesh Din said its report did not include the statistic mentioned by the military since the document focused on complaints filed by commanders of soldiers who were suspected of misconduct and not complaints filed by non-army bodies through the Judge Advocate's Office. "JAG directives to launch investigations are the result of complaints filed to the JAG by NGOs, diplomats and information coming from the press and operational debriefings. These directives have nothing to do with the problem addressed by Yesh Din: the extent to which military commanders and the military units fulfill their duty to report criminal offenses of their subordinates to the Military Police," the group said in a statement Thursday.