Haredim want the 19 year old haredi man who has admitted murdering his infant son by battering him, slamming him into a wall and biting him on the neck released from police custody tonight. If not, the haredi Kol Chai radio station reports, "Jerusalem [will] burn."
The man beat and tortured his son because the child's crying kept him awake and because of a birth defect in the infant's neck muscles, which disgusted him.
Haredi leaders call the arrest a "blood libel":
Rabbi Yitzhak Weiss, halachic authority and spiritual leader for Jerusalem's virulently anti-Zionist Eda Haredit community, said the indictment of the yeshiva student was "identical to the blood libels concocted by the evil Europeans against Jews before Pessah."…
"[The father] says the baby fell from his arms and Rabbi Weiss believes him," said Shmuel Popenheim, editor-in-chief of Ha'edah, the Eda Haredit's weekly. "There are people who will purposely lie to disparage us."
Mordechai Minzberg, an Eda Haredit activist, said that Weiss' accusation was very rare. "If it weren't Pessah eve, all the streets adjacent to Mea She'arim would be blocked and there would be demonstrations," he said.
The baby was buried Monday afternoon…
… Without an autopsy:
The baby [who] was hospitalized at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, in serious condition, with brain hemorrhaging, edema, signs of violence and bites on his body. The baby's body will not undergo an autopsy.