Israel Matzav: Ex-IDF officer alleges police brutality against girls at Amona

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Ex-IDF officer alleges police brutality against girls at Amona

Now it's not 'just settlers' who are alleging police brutality against girls - GIRLS! - at 'Amona.' A retired IDF officer who was present at the scene has now made the same allegations. Where there's smoke, there's fire. There have been too many complaints for this all to have been made up (not that I ever thought it was made up in the first place, but not all the people who read this blog have the same skepticism towards the Israeli government that I have).

Hat Tip: Ira in Petach Tikva

A retired Israel Defense Forces colonel who was present at the evacuation of nine structures in the West Bank outpost of Amona submitted a complaint Monday alleging police brutality against protesters who clashed with security forces.

Colonel (res.) Moti Yogev petitioned the Justice Ministry's Police Investigations Department for an inquiry into claims that Border Policemen, without provocation, struck young girls who asked to exit the vicinity where the clashes were taking place.

In his petition, Yogev writes that close to 11 A.M. on the day of the incident, an entire Border Police unit descended on a group of girls who, along with their teacher, were pinned against the wall, "begging [the officers] to allow them to leave the riot area."

"The officers began shoving them and hitting them for no reason," Yogev writes.

Yogev recalled how he approached an officer believed to be the commander of a police unit and requested that the security forces cease striking the girls and allow them to leave the scene.

"Three Border Policemen, among them Eyal Peri, pushed me and struck me with clubs in my stomach," Yogev wrote. "I fell as I was struggling to breathe, but the policemen kept pushing me and rolling me on the floor again and again. When I managed to get up, they pushed me against, and then I hurt my knee."

"Today I walk around on crutches with an injured knee that will require extensive rehabilitation," he wrote.

Yogev said that he witnessed "horses trampling over people lying underneath their horseshoes", a police commander who ordered his officers to catch young protesters who were loitering peacefully and to "just hit them."

Yogev also recounts how police officers entered a building where girls had locked arms. One of the girls told an officer: "My brother, don't hit me. I'm your sister."

Yogev said the officer "answered her in a Russian accent: 'Shut up you Jewish bitch' and brutally struck her."

Yogev, a former commander of special forces unit Sayeret Shaked and a deputy commander of Sayeret Matkal, submitted the complaint through attorneys Amikam Hadar and Hedva Shapira.

...

On Monday, a human rights groups representing the Yesha council of settlements revealed that three policemen who were at Amona volunteered information about the day's events, including the claim that police received unequivocal instructions to "crack open heads."