AN Israeli court on Sunday placed under house arrest a Palestinian-American teenager who was filmed being brutally beaten by police during clashes in Jerusalem.
Tarek Abu Khedeir, 15, who is the cousin of murdered West Bank teenager Mohammed Abu Khedeir, was released to house arrest for nine days, an attorney for the rights group Addameer said.
Court spokeswoman Luba Samri said that police had asked the judge to extend the remand of the teenager, claiming that he attacked police officers during violent protests over the murder of his cousin, 16-year-old Palestinian boy Mohammad Abu Khedeir.
Abu Khedeir’s family, which was visiting Jerusalem on holiday, was scheduled to depart within the same time period.
Tarek’s parents maintained his innocence and claim Israeli police officers committed an unprovoked attack on their son while he was handcuffed.
Among the conditions for his release are a bail of 3,000 shekels ($877). He will also not be permitted to enter the Shufat area of Jerusalem and must remain in Beit Hanina.
Tarek Abu Khdeir was beaten in the Shufat neighbourhood last Thursday night by Israeli police in the yard of his uncle’s home and arrested without charges.
The boy was taken to a police station following the beating, and police delayed treatment of his wounds until 1:20am, when he was taken to Hadassa Hospital. His family was not permitted to see Tarek until he was hospitalised, Addameer said.
News of his conditional release came as the United States said it is ‘profoundly concerned’ by the police violence.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the US ‘strongly condemn(s) any excessive use of force,’ in the wake of Abu Khedeir’s case.
‘We are calling for a speedy, transparent and credible investigation and full accountability for any excessive use of force,’ she added in a statement.
The teen is a student at Universal Academy of Florida high school in Tampa, USA. The Council on American-Islamic Relations had earlier called on the US State Department to secure Tarek’s release.
Tarek was one of eleven Palestinians who were beaten and arrested in the neighbourhood on Thursday, Addameer said.
Israeli police have arrested a group of Jewish extremists in connection with the kidnap and murder of Mohammed Abu Khedeir in East Jerusalem, an Israeli official said on Sunday, shortly after the website of the Haaretz newspaper reported six arrests in connection with the case.
Earlier, police acknowledged for the first time there were ‘indications that the background to the killing was nationalistic’.
Israeli police have also arrested dozens of people protesting against the murder of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khedeir, who was shown in an autopsy to have been burned alive in what many Palestinians believe was a revenge killing by Jewish extremists after the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank last month.
Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said: ‘Around 35 people were arrested overnight, almost half of them minors.’
Of those, 22 were arrested in and around the northern city of Nazareth, the most populous Palestinian town in Israel.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces stormed the Qarn al-Thour neighbourhood in Hebron in the southern West Bank after midnight on Sunday and detained a young Palestinian man in connection with the kidnapping and killing of the three Israeli settler teenagers weeks earlier.
Family members and Palestinian security sources confirmed that Israeli troops detained Husam Dufish from his home.
The Israeli intelligence accuses Dufish of involvement in the killing of the three settler youth along with Amir Abu Eisha and Marwan al-Qawasmi.
The Israeli forces claimed that Dufish had disappeared since the settler youth were kidnapped, while his family said that he was in his house living his life normally.
Israeli troops broke into the house two weeks ago, but he was not at home and so they handed his family members a summons demanding that he go to an intelligence office for questioning, but he did not go.
Israeli forces fired stun grenades at a Palestinian TV crew covering clashes between Israeli troops and young Palestinian men in al-Tur neighbourhood in East Jerusalem on Saturday.
Witnesses said that Palestine Today satellite channel reporter Ahmad al-Budeiri and his cameraman were hurt after Israeli soldiers fired stun grenades directly at them. Three protestors were hit by rubber-coated bullets during the clashes.
One was taken to hospital and had seven stitches in his foot which was cut by a rubber-coated bullet.
In the same neighbourhood, Israeli forces fired stun grenades at a group of young men walking in the main street and forced them to go inside a coffee shop.
Separately, Israeli troops detained four young Palestinian men during fierce clashes in the Ras al-Amoud neighbourhood in the Old City of Jerusalem. Also, witnesses said an Israeli settler fired gunshots into the air near the Christian Quarter in the Old City.
An Israeli police spokesman said forces responded to rioting in the area with non-lethal means.
A horde of armed Jewish settlers on Saturday afternoon chased a Palestinian boy from Artas village, south of Bethlehem, during his presence on cultivated land owned by his father.
Local witnesses said that a group of fanatic settlers with their dogs chased 12-year-old Qasem Ayyash as he was collecting some cucumbers on his father’s land in Khalat Annahla area in an attempt to kidnap him.
They added that the boy, luckily, was able to reach his uncle, who managed to fend off the assailants, but later Israeli policemen showed up and confiscated the uncle’s ID card.
In another incident, another group of Jewish settlers sized about 100 dunums of Palestinian-owned land in Tekoa town to the east of Bethlehem and established a new outpost on it.
Eyewitnesses reported that the settlers placed four mobile homes on Palestinian-owned land near their illegal settlement in the town.
Later on Sunday night, gangs of settlers attacked Palestinian citizens and vehicles in Ramallah, Al-Khalil and Jerusalem cities.
Khaled Shehadeh from Deir Ammar town in Ramallah said that Jewish settlers from Halamish settlement in the town threw stones at his car and broke some of its windows as he was driving back home, adding that he suffered cuts in the attack.
He also said that the settlers chanted racist slurs and death threats against the Palestinians during the incident. Other settlers from Gush Etzion settlement blocked the main road between Al-Khalil and Bethlehem cities and embarked on hurling stones at passing cars.
Similar attacks on Palestinian vehicles were reported in Al-Hawour area in Halhoul city. In the same context, the Israeli police detained on Saturday evening Palestinian citizens as they were defending themselves against settlers’ attacks in Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in occupied Jerusalem.
A resident from the neighbourhood said that some settlers attacked citizens in the area with pepper gas, which caused five of them, including a girl, to suffer from its effects, adding the settlers also smashed windows of seven cars.
He added that the Israeli police provided protection for the settlers during their attacks and detained two Palestinian young men identified as Ahmed and Mahmoud Al-Sabbagh as they were trying to ward off the settlers’ aggression.
