Soldiers indicted for beating Palestinian
Two soldiers from Haruv Battalion charged for severely assaulting Palestinian adolescent for no reason, threatening to kill him ‘if he talks’
An indictment was filed Wednesday at the Central Command court house in Jaffa against two soldiers from the Haruv battalion for allegedly abusing a Palestinian adolescent near the settlement of Shavei Shomron in the West Bank.
The soldiers were charged with assault under aggravated circumstances and inappropriate conduct. It was still unclear whether indictments would be filed against two other soldiers who were present during the incident.
According to testimonies recorded during investigations into the incident, the soldiers ran into Saar Muhsan, an 18-year-old Palestinian student, during standard security patrols in the West Bank. The troops called him over and allegedly punched him and struck him with a pole.
When the incident first came to light, the battalion commander sentenced the offending soldiers to severe detention, but owing to the gravity of the incident, the Judge Advocate General Corps instructed to cancel the detention and have the soldiers stand trial by a military judge.
The assault
Muhsan, after being assaulted by IDF soldiers, described the difficult incident to Ynet: One of the soldiers asked for his ID and asked him to stand on the side of the road next to another Palestinian, who possessed a videotape of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah. One of the soldiers told him to read what was written in Arabic on the videotape and translate it.
When Muhsan said he didn't know how to translate into Hebrew, the soldier retrieved a wooden staff from his vehicle. According to the youth, the other Palestinian ran and the soldier, unable to catch him, bound Muhsan's hands and forced him to come looking for the other man.
"The soldier asked me 'Why did you tell him to run?' When I said that I hadn't told him anything, he started hitting me…with the stick, mainly in the head. I told him 'That hurts very much, I haven't done anything.'"
"I started bleeding, mostly from my head, and they said 'That's Hizbullah blood, that's Hamas blood'. They threw me into a nearby ditch and threw stones at me, stepped on my face and said 'Here's where you're going to die'," he recounted.
At that point, Muhsan said, the jeep was heard again. "The soldiers put something over my eyes and mouth and threw me into their vehicle so that the jeep wouldn't see." The whole time, he recalled, the driver of the vehicle did nothing to intervene. "When I tried to free myself and shout out to the jeep, he kicked me," he said.
'Threatened to kill me'
Muhsan claims that the soldiers barely checked passing Palestinians, and hurried them along in order to return to beating him. Finally, they examined his wallet, returned it and released him. "They said: 'If you tell anyone about this, we'll kill you'," he said.
Muhsan said that when he asked for his cellphone, he was beaten again, and when he asked for his ID, he was beaten another time. According to the youth, they issued renewed threats to kill him.
Muhsan said: "I noticed NIS 1,000 were missing from my wallet, so I returned and mentioned it to the soldiers. They laughed and then jumped on me…One of them grabbed me and said 'we'll kill you if you talk'."
The youth finally made it to his home town, where he received stitches to stop the bleeding in his head. He immediately lodged a complaint with Israeli human rights organization Betselem and met with a representative the same evening.
Ali Waked contributed to the report
