Officers from the central unit of the Jerusalem District Police have arrested an imam (Muslim clergyman) who is a resident of Jerusalem’s terrorist hotbed neighborhood of Jabel Mukabar, south of the Old City.
The suspect was accused of inciting violence and terrorism during his sermons at a mosque in the Jerusalem Arab neighborhood of Beit Safafa, also in southern Jerusalem.
“Anyone who uses a house of worship to preach words of hatred and to incite violence and terrorism will be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law,” police said in a statement.
The imam who was taken into custody but whose identity was not revealed, is the third such Islamic clergy member to be arrested for questioning in the Israeli capital since the October 7 invasion of southern Israel and murder of more than a thousand Israelis by Hamas terrorists and civilians from Gaza, according to a police spokesperson.
His arrest, as with those of the two prior Muslim suspects, came as part of the fight against incitement to violence and terror in the mosques, police said.
