VIDEO - The Police Internal Affairs Bureau on Monday filed charges with the Kfar Saba Magistrates' Court against two former Border Guard officers, for the alleged assault of a Palestinian boy near the West Bank village of Hawara, last year.
A video of the two beating the boy during what was suppose to be a routine patrol in the villages south of the West Bank city of Nablus, was aired on Ynet last March.
According to the indictment, the officers, Yehuda Hasid and Yaron Blantz, detained 17-year old Hindawi Quariq while on routine patrol in order to check his papers.
Hasid, who commanded the patrol, began hitting Quariq on the head and chest, for no apparent reason. Blantz then followed, slapping the boy and punching him.
Hasid, stated the indictment, did nothing to stop him. As a result, Quariq suffered lesions and considerable bruising. Local residents who witnessed the assault called on a Palestinian cameraman living near by, who captured the incident on video.
The two officers were charged with aggravated assault of a helpless minor.
'They just wouldn't stop'
Quariq told Ynet that he and his friends had tried to stop a taxi that day, to take them to the nearby West Bank village of Awatra. The boys noticed the Border Guard officers, and Quariq reportedly told his friends that if they go by the force, "they will beat us, just like they did several weeks ago."
The troops then held Quariq and two other boys for a paper inspection, letting the rest of the group to go on its way.
"I remembered the beating I took two weeks before, so I pretended not to hear them," Quariq told Ynet, "but one of them run after me. I stopped, he pulled me back towards their jeep and then he pinned me up against the wall, so the others won't see what he's doing.
"They banged my head in a nearby door, knocked me down and hit me over the head… I kept yelling for them to check my papers, but they wouldn't stop." Only one of the officers tried to help him, he added, calling them to stop because "maybe the boy really didn't hear you, but they just kept on hitting me."
One of the Border Guard officers, said Quariq, began tearing up his schoolbooks and then threw them in his face. "Then they gave me back my ID, one of them slapped me and the other slapped me and punched me several times."
Many of Hawara's residents claim that security forces – Border Guard officers in particular – have made the village's life a living nightmare, "declaring curfews every few days because their patrol cars are allegedly stoned."