The Department of Internal Police Investigations (DIPI) arrested the wife of Hadera police chief Amit Pollak on Monday on suspicion of destroying her husband’s phone — key evidence in an ongoing probe into the senior officer.
A Justice Ministry spokesperson told The Times of Israel that Shlomit Pollak was released to house arrest until Saturday, as investigators sought to extend her remand after she claimed to have thrown the phone into the sea. The phone had until recently been held by police, but they had been briefly forced to return it to Pollak following a court order.
The sought-after device lies at the heart of an investigation into Chief Superintendent Amit Pollak, suspected of abusing his power as the head of Hadera’s police station. Pollak and other cops have been accused of assaulting and violently arresting a group of elderly anti-government protesters in April 2024.
DIPI officials questioned Pollak for the first time in August on suspicions of abusing official authority, assault and obstruction of justice.
In August investigators seized Pollak’s phone in a nighttime search of his home. Per the agency’s account, when asked to hand over his phone at the investigation’s outset, Pollak lied that it was broken. After officials seized the still-functioning device, he further hindered the probe by refusing to divulge his password.
The raid on Pollak’s home provoked the wrath of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. The far-right politician lauded Pollak as an “outstanding” officer caught in the crosshairs of the Justice Ministry. He further accused the “politicized” DIPI of “doing all it can to try to deter police officers from fulfilling their job and responsibility to act in a professional manner.”
Investigators held onto the phone for months until the start of this week, when the Haifa District Court ordered it returned to its owner. The DIPI quickly appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled in the agency’s favor and told Pollak to give back the phone to investigators.
But when Justice Ministry officials arrived at Pollak’s home on Monday, he reportedly told them that a relative had taken it and that he did not know its whereabouts. The officials questioned both him and his wife Shlomit the same day, then arrested the latter after she claimed to have thrown the device into the sea. Shlomit claimed she feared that spyware had been installed on the device, according to Ynet.
DIPI investigators are now trying to ascertain whether the station commander had requested or had prior knowledge of his wife’s actions in light of his repeated apparent attempts to withhold the device from investigators.
The agency began probing Pollak last summer after receiving a complaint from an anti-government protester who said he and others had been detained and beaten by Pollak ahead of a protest set to take place outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Caesarea.
The complainant, Shemi Attar, was one of several activists — a group of elderly Yom Kippur War veterans — who took a mock cardboard tank to the city on the back of a truck.
Hours before the demonstration was scheduled to begin, the group stopped at a member’s house for coffee and parked the truck outside. Soon, over a dozen police officers arrived at the residence without body cameras, demanding the keys to the truck.
The situation quickly became violent, with Pollak allegedly hitting Attar, before dragging him by his hands and feet to a patrol car, according to the complaint.
Videos taken of the incident by bystanders clearly show Pollak lunging at one of the demonstrators, pushing him down to the asphalt and then shoving him into a cop car.
“All the police officers who partook in the violent arrests acted without authorization, without justification and against the law and procedure for the arrest of a civilian,” Attar said to Israel’s Channel 12 earlier this year.
“I didn’t pose any danger [to the officers] for even a second. There was no protest or public disturbance to justify the illegal action of arresting a civilian on his front doorstep.”