A Zionist policeman physically assaulted and injured several Palestinians in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi Joz on Thursday morning, a video filmed by a witnessed showed.
The video shows a plainclothes police officer aggressively verbally confronting a Palestinian truck driver — later identified as 50-year-old Mazen Rafaat Shweiki — after the latter allegedly hit the officer’s car.
Over the course of the nearly two-minute long video, the officer proceeds to headbutt, slap, punch, kick, and knee the Shweiki in the lower abdomen.
“I was heading to work in my truck, which was parked in the Ministry of Interior’s parking lot in Wadi Joz as usual this morning, when I was surprised by an Israeli special force officer who headed towards me and asked me: ‘Why did you hit my car?’” Shweiki recounted.
“I told him that I had hit his car on Tuesday and that I had tried to find out who was the owner of the car to help repair it, but that I hadn’t been able to find him,” he said, adding that the officer then started cursing at him.
Shweiki told Ma’an that he sustained fractured ribs following the assault.
Ahmad al-Tawil, a 26 year-old Jerusalemite who witnessed the scene, told Ma’an that Shweiki was starting up his vehicle when the Israeli officer, dressed in civilian clothing with a gun on his belt, went up to the truck driver and started berating him.
Al-Tawil said that he tried to intervene once the officer began assaulting Shweiki, only for the Israeli officer to hit him several times in the head and stomach, injuring al-Tawil in the eye.
The video then goes on to show at least two other Israeli police officers arriving at the scene, before the first officer violently kicks Shweiki in the back as he attempted to enter his vehicle.
Al-Tawil said that three Israeli special forces officers arrived at the scene at the time when the video cut off, and assaulted Palestinian men present at the scene, pulling their guns on them while the first Israeli officer went on to assault Shweiki.
Shweiki confirmed that the police officers who arrived later on the scene also assaulted him and the other Palestinians who had tried to defuse the situation.
Source: Ma'an News Agency
