Shin Bet reportedly demands unauthorized access to photos of citizens at airport

The Shin Bet security agency has reportedly demanded access to photos taken of people passing through Ben Gurion Airport and other border crossings, despite not being allowed to under the current law.

According to a Friday report in Haaretz, Shin Bet chief David Zini demanded the access in order to use facial recognition to identify potential criminals, after the government on Wednesday approved a new plan for the Shin Bet to fight rampant violent crime in the Arab Israeli sector.

However, Israeli law specifies that such photographs are only allowed to be accessed by the Population and Immigration Authority, which is required to delete the images after 90 days.

The agency is not allowed to transfer them to any other government bodies, including the Shin Bet. The photos are used within the agency’s biometric identification system.

Haaretz reported that Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara warned Zini that allowing such access would require special legislation, after which Zini was said to have blamed her for rising crime rates.

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The Shin Bet denied the report in a statement to Haaretz, calling it “baseless” and saying it “does not accord with reality.”

3 detained for acting unruly on plane, then assaulted officers

Separately, three Israelis were detained and removed from an airplane at Ben Gurion Airport after causing a disturbance, police said on Friday.

According to a police statement, airport police officers responded to a report from the flight crew of a foreign airline that was preparing to take off.

Three passengers were behaving in a disorderly manner and posing a danger to passengers and crew, police said. The three men — residents of central Israel in their 20s — refused requests from both the crew and the police officers to leave the plane, and were arrested and disembarked by officers.

During the arrest, the suspects assaulted the officers, who required medical treatment, police said.

The suspects will be brought to court on Saturday for a remand hearing.

Israir flight from London canceled after collision with aircraft tug

In another incident in London, Israir Flight 116 from Luton Airport to Tel Aviv was canceled on Thursday evening after the aircraft tug damaged the plane while it was being towed ahead of takeoff, the airline said.

Approximately 300 people were on board the flight, according to passenger testimonies cited in Hebrew-language media outlets.

According to a passenger’s Facebook post, people were left on the plane for several hours, during which the air conditioning wasn’t working for some of the time.

“After we yelled, they opened the doors despite it not being connected to the stairs, something very dangerous, but at least we could breathe,” the passenger wrote on Facebook.

Only after some medical incidents were the passengers allowed off the plane. But they were then forced to wait in the terminal for an additional period of several hours before they received lifts to hotels, the passenger said.

“All they gave us were water bottles. There was no Israir representative to explain to us what was happening, and no concrete solutions were offered,” a group of passengers explained, in testimony cited by Walla.

Israir said in a statement that it provided passengers with hotels and transport to accommodation, and offered to reimburse those who organized lodgings for themselves.

The company also said it worked with third parties to organize flights throughout Friday for the stranded passengers, while those who kept Shabbat and could not be put on a flight before the Sabbath would be flown home on Sunday.

The airline blamed the airport for the incident.

“This is the third incident of this sort to occur at the London airport, and to our knowledge, no orderly investigation has been carried out by the airport’s management into these incidents,” Israir added.