Arab school counselor says police arrested and beat him for honking at cop car

An Arab high school counselor says he was unjustly arrested and beaten by police in northern Israel earlier this month, after he honked his horn at an officer whose cruiser was blocking the street.

Issam Sharif, from the northern Arab village of Kafr Yasif, was left with bruises on his shoulders, arms, and back from the successive beatings he endured during his arrest and at the station where police held him until morning, he told The Times of Israel in a recent interview.

Sharif filed a complaint with the Department of Internal Police Investigations (DIPI), a police-probing body in the State Attorney’s Office, and said he plans to sue the officers for damages.

The DIPI is examining the incident but has not yet launched a criminal investigation, the agency told The Times of Israel on Sunday.

Sharif said he had been returning home past midnight on May 15 when he encountered a police car in the middle of the road. One of the officers responsible for the vehicle stood outside, speaking with a group of young men.

Sharif recalled pulling up near the police car and waiting in silence, hoping the officer would notice him and make way for his vehicle.

After about 10 minutes, Sharif called to the policeman from his car, asking him to open the road. The officer refused, saying he was preparing to search the men.

He waited several minutes more as the officer continued to converse with the men, then honked his car horn and asked to be let through. The officer doubled down on his refusal.

According to Sharif, the young men eventually drove off without being searched. The police officer then strode up to him and ordered him to exit his car.

“The officer didn’t ask for an identity card, driver’s license — nothing. He simply told me to get out of the car,” he said. “When I asked him why, the officer forced open the door [which was left unlocked] and began to beat me.”

Sharif said he fought back in self-defense while still in his vehicle, which prompted the officer’s partner — who had been in the car in the middle of the road — to bring a taser and threaten to zap him with it.

“Luckily, the door on the right side was locked, and he didn’t manage to open it, just threatened me with his taser outside the door,” Sharif said.

Sharif, who insisted he has never been arrested before, said the officers wrangled him out of the vehicle, cuffed him, and brought him to the police station, where he spent the night.

“I asked them to explain why I was under arrest. They told me that the police officer who brought me there was supposed to inform me of the reason,” he said.

Sharif alleged that during his night at the station, the officer who detained him brought him to the bathroom under the pretense of conducting a search, but instead subjected him to another beating.

According to Sharif, another policeman whom he met at the station guarded the door, while the arresting officer “removed his body camera, placed it on the edge of the sink, and again began hitting me.”

The next morning, a police investigator reviewed the body camera footage from his arrest hours prior and asked Sharif a string of questions about how it transpired. He was released shortly afterwards, he said.

Police handed Sharif a fine for NIS 1,000 ($345) for texting while driving, which he insisted he is not guilty of.

Still in pain after being released from the station, Sharif checked himself into a clinic. He did not suffer fractures as a result of the beatings.

Police did not immediately respond to The Times of Israel’s request for comment regarding the suspicions warranting Sharif’s arrest or the alleged assault by officers.

The incident is one of several recent instances in which police officers have been accused of using unwarranted force against law-abiding citizens, Arab Israelis in particular.

At the start of May, police officers in Beersheba reportedly attacked, arrested, and broke the nose of an Arab Israeli government prosecutor over a noise complaint, alongside two of his relatives. Police accused him of assaulting officers who came to his apartment, but body camera footage of the incident appeared to contradict law enforcement’s version.