NOVANEWS
On Tuesday, 14 May 2013, shortly after 2:00 A.M., Sharif was woken by noises outside his house. A moment later, his brother Ahmad, who lives next door, phoned and told him that Israeli security forces had surrounded his house. In his testimony, given to B’Tselem field researcher Musa Abu Hashhash, Sharif related how events then unfolded:
I looked out of the window that faces my brother’s house. I couldn’t see anything unusual outside. Suddenly, I heard someone address me in Hebrew. He asked for my name and I told him. A few seconds later, I heard knocking at the door. I opened the door and five or six policemen came in. They were wearing gray uniforms and black masks. There was another person with them wearing a green uniform and no mask. He ordered me, in Arabic, to leave the house with him. I explained that my leg is broken and showed him the crutches that I use to walk. He told me that I was lying and insisted that I come along.
I got dressed, got my crutches and went out. There were three police vehicles outside. When I reached them, one of the policemen opened the side door of a Savana vehicle and two other policemen shoved me in. My broken leg hit the step of the vehicle very hard. It hurt so badly that I screamed.
The policemen ignored my cries. They put me inside and then the vehicle drove off. They blindfolded me and tied my hands in front of me with plastic cable ties. They lifted me off the floor of the vehicle and put me on the back seat. I kept on screaming. Every time the vehicle moved, it hurt my leg, and the pain was getting worse. I begged the policemen sitting next to me to ask the driver to slow down at bumps in the road, but the driver did the reverse – he sped up every time he reached a bump. On the way, one of the policemen sitting next to me slapped me hard to shut me up. The policemen also swore at me and threatened me. I was very scared and kept quiet.
At about 5:00 A.M., after the forces had arrested another person in Beit Ula, they arrived at the Gush Etzion police station. Sharif was taken out of the police vehicle and put in a room with the other detainee from Beit Ula. The policemen offered Sharif no medical treatment and ordered him to sit on the floor, facing a wall. About half an hour later, the two men were put back in the vehicle and it drove off. Sharif related:
The policemen took off my blindfold. It was already light and I could see the road, but I didn’t know where they were taking me and Khaled, the other guy who was arrested. The vehicle stopped at a police station. The policemen told us that we were in [the Israeli town of] Kiryat Malachi. While we were waiting in the vehicle outside the police station, I wanted to try and ease the pain in my leg, so Khaled helped me bind the painful area with the pieces of cloth that the policemen had used to blindfold us. One of the policemen saw what we were doing and got angry. He pulled off the two pieces of cloth and punched me in the leg, where the bone was broken. I cried out in pain.
The policemen took both men out of the vehicle, brought them into the police station and left. Sharif told B’Tselem that, while he was awaiting questioning, he asked the policemen for medical treatment or at least painkillers, but was refused. At around 11:00 A.M., he was taken into an interrogation room. Sharif described the questioning as follows:
The interrogator told me that I was suspected of having stolen a car in Kiryat Malachi. I explained to him that I’d hardly left the house in nearly three months because of my broken leg. He must have realized that there was no way I could have done it and that I wasn’t the person they were seeking. About half an hour after the questioning began, he told me that they were letting me go. Policemen put me in a vehicle and took me to Tarqumya Checkpoint. En route, I called my brother and told him that I was on my way there. I asked him to call for an ambulance and he said that an ambulance would be waiting at the checkpoint. The policemen let me off at the checkpoint and some young Palestinian guys who were there helped me cross it. A few minutes later, an ambulance came and took me to a hospital in Hebron.
An X-ray of Sharif’s leg taken at Al-Ahli Hospital, Hebron, revealed that he had sustained a new fracture, next to the old one. He underwent surgery, in which the doctors replaced the metal implants in his leg with new ones. Sharif was discharged after five days in hospital.
B’Tselem wrote to the Department for Investigation of Police (DIP) demanding that an investigation into the incident be opened. The DIP informed B’Tselem that they are looking into the complaint.
