Monday, September 29, 2014

Video: Florida teen tortured by Israeli police tells his story

“I was zip-tied and leg-cuffed and beaten, punched and kicked in the face until I was unconscious. And even when I went unconscious they kept punching and kicking me like I was a punching bag. And I woke up blindfolded in jail … I felt like I was in my cousin’s place, God rest his soul.” – Tariq Abukhdeir
In the early hours of 2 July, Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu Khudair waskidnapped from the eastern occupied Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat allegedly by three Israelis seeking vengeance for the killings of three Israeli youths kidnapped several weeks earlier in the occupied West Bank.
Muhammad’s body was found later that morning. He had been burned to death.
Hours later, Muhammad’s 15-year-old cousin and friend Tariq Abukhdeir, who was visiting for the summer from Tampa, Florida, was savagely beaten by Israeli police amid a wild crackdown in Shuafat against a population angered and traumatized by the earlier killing.
Because the attack on Tariq was caught on video, it quickly gained intense media attention, and rare condemnation from the US government.
On 20 September, Tariq and his mother Suha Abukhdeir told their story at theconference of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation in San Diego, California.
The video of their testimony is above.
With thanks to Mansoor Sabbagh of Global Voices for Justice for videography and production.

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