Adalah Demands Investigation into Assault by Police Officers of Arab Bedouin in Unrecognized Village in the Naqab Following Protests against Home Demolition Orders

On 14 December 2005, Adalah filed six complaints to the Director of the Ministry of Justice's Police Investigation Unit (Mahash), Herzel Shbiro, demanding that police officers involved in an assault against Arab Bedouin inhabitants of the unrecognized village of Beer el-Mashash in the Naqab (Negev) on 15 November 2005 be investigated and criminally prosecuted. Adalah Attorney Morad El-Sana filed the complaints on behalf of six families from the village, who were brutally assaulted by the police.

On 15 November 2005, police officers accompanied investigators from the Ministry of the Interior, who had come to distribute home demolition orders on a number of houses in the village belonging to the Abu Sbeet family. While in the village, police officers employed excessive force and violence against the villagers, citizens of Israel, who were protesting against the orders.

The police assault lead to a large number of the village's residents' sustaining various serious injuries. Some individuals required medication attention from a local hospital and are receiving ongoing medical treatment. The police then detained 42 people, the majority of whom were not involved in confrontations with the police, and who were released a short time after their arrest.

Adalah included in the complaints the affidavit of Mr. Ahmad Abu Suwais, a photographer working for the Israeli cable television channel “Hot,” who was also assaulted by police while he documented the events as part of his professional work. Police officers seized his video camera and beat him all over his body. Mr. Abu Suwais recounts in his affidavit how one police officer threatened him with a weapon while he was filming inside one of the houses and ordered him to leave the scene. Mr. Abu Suwais added that police commander Sergeant Moshe Zarihan was among those who attacked him, shoving him several times and forcibly removing him from the area in which he was filming.

In a complaint filed to Mahash on her behalf, Ms. Ghaida Abu Subour describes how police officers assaulted her, beating her all over her body without any justification. As a result of the attack she sustained a serious head injury, lost consciousness and fell to the ground. Ms. Abu Subour remained lying on the ground hemorrhaging blood from her head without receiving assistance or treatment from police officers. Only after a period of time and following repeated requests from people present at the scene did a police officer agree to call for an ambulance to transport her to a hospital. The medical report stated that she was suffering from serious blows to the hip, beating on the chest and a wound of ten centimeters in length to the head. Ms. Abu Subour added that police officers wreaked havoc in the house of a relative of hers, breaking the door, smashing windows and causing serious damage to property inside.

Adalah heavily criticized the conduct of the police in the complaints, arguing that they had used excessive force in an unreasonable manner and without cause, and that their violent treatment of Arab Bedouin inhabitants of the Naqab had been racially motivated. Adalah added that the behavior of the police officers is evidence that they came to frighten and intimidate the villagers through force, rather than to maintain public safety and safeguard the rule of law.

Adalah emphasized that “Police officers harmed the dignity of the complainants and their rights under the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom. Through their actions they crudely violated the principle of the rule of law. The police leadership displayed great hostility towards the inhabitants of Beer el-Mashash, summoning special police units to the scene. The police fired large numbers of live rounds in the area inhabited by the villagers, arousing great fear, especially among children, some of whom were also assaulted by police officers. Many children are still suffering from great fear and psychological harm.”