Israel committed a criminal act against me, says Palestinian tied to army vehicle

Mujahed Abbadeh speaks to media from hospital about his brutal arrest during a raid by Israeli forces in Jenin on Saturday

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Mujahed Abbadeh grimaced as he shifted in his hospital bed, his right arm held by metal rods, as he told media how he was arrested by Israeli troops, tied to the front of a military vehicle and driven through the streets of Jenin in the occupied West Bank.

The incident on Saturday was captured in a video that caused global outrage and an admission from the Israeli military that Mr Abbadeh’s treatment was “in violation of orders and standard operating procedures”.

“I can’t move my leg,” Mr Abbadeh said. “My arm hurts tremendously. I feel very bad about what happened.”

The vegetable seller, 23, said the soldiers beat and abused him as they arrested him, despite finding nothing incriminating when they raided his family home.

“They were hitting me on my head, they were hitting me on my leg before even putting me on the jeep,” said Mr Abbadeh, who in earlier reports was misnamed as Mujahed Azmi. “They were insulting me while they put me on the jeep.”

The Israeli military said Mr Abbadeh was arrested during a “counter-terrorism operation”, but he says he is not part of any militant group and that the army had no reason to attack him.

“They committed a criminal act against me. They acted against me in a horrendous manner … I’m on nobody’s list. I told them to check me and they checked me and still they mistreated me.”

Exactly what the Israeli military hoped to achieve by strapping Mr Abbadeh to the bonnet was not immediately clear.

It is possible troops wanted to humiliate him or prevent Palestinians from throwing rocks or shooting at the vehicle by using him as a human shield, a tactic Israel has been accused of in the past.

Mr Abbadeh’s cousin said the military had recently done the same thing to three other people, but the claim could not be independently verified.

The military said Mr Abbadeh was later handed over to the Palestine Red Crescent for treatment, and that “the incident will be investigated and dealt with accordingly”.

But an acknowledgement that he was mistreated brings him little comfort.

“This is all talk, in reality they won’t do anything. They won’t punish anybody who mistreated me,” Mr Abbadeh said.

Dr Bahaa Abu Hammad, the doctor treating Mr Abbadeh at Ibn Sina hospital, told AFP that “he has burns on his back from neck to lower back” from being tied to the vehicle in the scorching summer heat.

A few kilometres from the hospital, at Mr Abbadeh’s family home overlooking Jenin, bullet marks on the outside walls and the burnt shell of his car are reminders of Saturday’s raid.

His cousin, Rafat Hasanieh, said the military searched the home but did not find any weapons.

“The army came into the house with a drone, they searched the house, then the soldiers came in with dogs and searched again,” he said.