Haredim attempt to block autopsy
Police were conducting searches in Beit Shemesh on Sunday morning for the body of a woman who died overnight Saturday.
Haredi residents of Beit Shemesh have reportedly hidden the woman's body to prevent the police from taking it for an autopsy, which is prohibited according to Jewish law.
Police detectives questioned the woman's husband and family to establish the cause of death, but so far there is no suspicion of foul play.
Zaka chairman Yehuda Meshi-Zahav acted on Sunday morning as an intermediary between the police and the people who allegedly hid the body.
Meshi-Zahav said in an interview to Israel Radio that the deceased, a haredi woman who was in the middle of divorce proceedings, had collapsed while walking in what appeared to be a natural death.
Similar cases in the past include the riots that broke out in Jerusalem following the autopsy in February 2006 of Frida Wiesel, an 89-year old woman who died during a burglary, and the deaths of two babies who were cared for in the same Jerusalem day-care center and died within 13 days of each other in December 1999.
Frida Wiesel was autopsied at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir and the autopsy revealed that she was bludgeoned to death during the burglary of her home.
The haredi parents of the two infants refused to have autopsies performed, and thus health officials never discovered the cause of the infants' deaths.
Etgar Lefkovits contributed to this report.
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