Man with bomb arrested at Jerusalem pride parade

Moments before a gay pride march on June 21 was to begin in Jerusalem, police arrested a man carrying a homemade bomb. Police said the 32-year-old said he planned to detonate it near the parade route to scare people away. The arrest was one of nearly 200 as members of the haredi, an ultra-Orthodox sect, rioted for several days in opposition to the parade. Garbage cans were set on fire and stones thrown at police. Twenty-two officers were reportedly injured. Earlier that day, Israel's Supreme Court rejected a last minute bid by opponents of the parade who tried to argue that because of a work slowdown by firefighters, public safety was in danger because of the large number of police needed to ensure the safety of marchers. Some 7,000 police -- many brought in from other cities -- were stationed along the parade route, far outnumbering the marchers estimated at about 1,000. At one point, police routed about 500 haredim armed with eggs and bags of excrement. At another point on the parade route, only a few blocks long, protesters tried to pour cooking oil on the road so marchers would slip and fall. Protests by the haredi have been staged nightly since the gay parade received a police sanction last week and an openly gay Jerusalem city councilor is under police protection following dozens of death threats. Last year's pride march was canceled following a week of rioting in Jerusalem by the haredi. Thousands of sect members took to the streets for a week, setting fire to garbage cans and injuring more than a dozen people. Earlier in the day a conservative member of the Israeli Parliament called for gays to be placed in internment camps. "Like we have institutions to rehabilitate drug abusers, we should establish special teams with psychologists to help them return to a normal life," said Nissim Ze'ev, a member of the Shas party. Ze'ev also said that gay sex should be "recriminalized."