Border Police officers say they took Palestinian girl’s bike to protect her

The two cops, who are facing internal investigation, claim they wanted to prevent 8-year-old from entering Jewish area of Hebron

JERUSALEM — Two Border Police officers caught on video taking a bicycle from an 8-year-old Palestinian girl told investigators they did so to protect her.

One of the guards was suspended from active duty on Tuesday, and both were questioned under caution on Wednesday as potential suspects in the July 25 incident. The video, taken by a volunteer for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, was released Monday and has been viewed more than 185,000 times on YouTube.

The video shows one of the officers approaching the girl, identified as Anwar Burqan, on a street in Hebron near the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which is not permitted to be used by Palestinians. The girl appears to be afraid and jumps off her bike, which the cop prevents her from taking as she runs in tears from the scene.

The video then shows the second officer dumping the bike in some nearby bushes.

According to their attorneys, the guards told investigators that they took the girl’s bicycle to prevent her from crossing into the Jewish neighborhood, which bans Palestinians, Haaretz reported.

They said they took the bicycle because they cannot speak Arabic and were afraid they would not get their point across. They later allowed a family member to retrieve the bike, when it was clear she would not ride it in the Jewish area.

“The main lesson to learn from this is that judging an incident purely based on a video without even the least bit of interest in the officers’ version is a vicious and ugly thing,” the border guards’ attorneys said, according to Israeli media reports.

The Border Police said in a statement following the publication of the video that it “regrets” the incident, and that the Police Internal Investigations Department would investigate.