Last update - 00:00 28/01/2007
Body of Haredi woman, snatched for fear of autopsy, handed to police
By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent
Police said on Sunday they had retrieved the corpse of an ultra-Orthodox Beit Shemesh woman whose body was snatched Saturday by members of the community in the town who feared an autopsy would be performed on the body.
On Saturday, police received a report of a woman who collapsed and died near a synagogue in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in the town.
Her body was found in an open field nearby, where a paramedic team established her death and came under the impression that the woman had died naturally, as no violence marks were found on the body.
Community members, however, feared that the body would be taken for an autopsy by the authorities. Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox men and women came to the scene and surrounded the body, preventing police from accessing it.
The corpse was then smuggled to an unknown location, but police suspect it was hidden in one of the synagogues in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood.
"Several hundred members of the ultra-Orthodox community approached policemen at the scene and injured four officers and snatched the body," said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.
"We did not ask to carry out an autopsy on the woman. They grabbed the body thinking we wanted to carry one out," he said.
Rosenfeld said there was no sign of violence on the corpse or any indication of criminality.
Hadassah University Hospital doctors who examined the body on Sunday said there was no indication of criminality or violence on the woman. The woman's body was then laid to rest.
After an extensive police search and lengthy negotiations with rabbis, the ultra-Orthodox community handed the body over to a hospital on Sunday for an external examination to determine the cause of death. The body was later buried.
Detectives collected testimonies from the woman's relatives and neighborhood residents Saturday night in an attempt to locate the body.