Relative of Murdered Palestinian Teen Mohammed Abu Khdeir Beaten Up in Jerusalem

Source: Haaretz

His family says police refused to launch an investigation unless the victim files it himself.

A 63-year-old Palestinian was attacked Thursday night in Jerusalem by unknown assailants. As of Saturday evening, the police have yet to launch an investigation.

The man, Zoheir Abu Khdeir, a resident of East Jerusalem’s Shoafat neighborhood who works at an Egged bus parking lot, was beaten severely by at least two men. According to relatives, Abu Khdeir described the attackers as Jewish.

Abu Khdeir is a cousin of Hussein Abu Khdeir, the father of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, the teen who was abducted and murdered by three Jewish assailants in revenge for the murder of three Jewish teens in 2014.

Zoheir Abu Khdeir was diagnosed with a broken nose, a severe cut to the face and bruises to his eyes and head. He had to receive 12 stitches and was hospitalized overnight.

According to his family, he is in a dazed state and has trouble describing what happened. His eyes are almost shut by the bruises, the family said.

About an hour after the assault, a family member called the police but was told Abu Khdeir would have to come to the station and file a complaint. His relatives said they told the police emergency line that they had photos of the car Abu Khdeir’s friends said was connected to the assailants. But the police did not launch an investigation.

On Friday, Abu Khdeir’s son went to the police station in Neveh Ya’akov in north Jerusalem, not far from Shoafat. Still, the police refused to take his complaint and said Abu Khdeir would have to come to the police station himself. According to the family, the doctors who treated Abu Khdeir filed a police report.

In the summer of 2014, two days before Mohammed Abu Khdeir’s murder, Shoafat residents complained to the police that Jewish men had tried to abduct a 9-year-old boy in the neighborhood. The residents said the police did not take their complaint seriously enough, later enabling Mohammed Abu Khdeir’s abduction and murder.

It later emerged that the three suspects in Abu Khdeir’s murder had tried to kidnap the 9-year-old boy two days earlier.

“We don’t want it to be like it was with Mohammed, that the police did nothing,” Majed Abu Khdeir, the victim’s brother, said on Thursday night. “What would happen if the opposite had happened, if a Jew had been beaten up? An arrest within minutes.”

The Jerusalem police said they had no record of a complaint to the police hotline or the station.

“The incident was not reported to the police,” they said. “The relevant officials have been informed, and if he indeed cannot come to the station, a policeman will go to him tomorrow to take his statement properly.”