Bedouin family accuses police of mistreating bank shooting victim

Brother says Omar Wallid was seen as a suspect because of his ethnicity; police insist officers were following regulations

Aaron Kalman is a former writer and breaking news editor for the Times of Israel

A woman was treated for shock and rushed to the hospital after she was held hostage by a gunman in a Beersheba bank, Monday, May 20 (photo credit: Dudu Greenspan/Flash90)
A woman was treated for shock and rushed to the hospital after she was held hostage by a gunman in a Beersheba bank, Monday, May 20 (photo credit: Dudu Greenspan/Flash90)

The family of Omar Wallid, a bystander shot and injured in the Beersheba bank attack on Monday, have charged that he was handcuffed and mistreated when taken to hospital because he was Bedouin.

Wallid was severely wounded during Itamar Alon’s murderous rampage at a branch of Bank Hapoalim that ended in the death of four people, including two bank employees, before Alon took his own life.

Wallid suffered two bullet wounds while sheltering a friend who had escorted him to the bank. “He saved my life with his body,” Rami Vaknin said.

“For a long time Omar was lying handcuffed while everyone thought he was a terrorist because he’s a Bedouin man from Rahat,” Hayman Wallid, the victim’s brother, told the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.

MK Taleb Abu Arar (Ra’am Ta’al) requested an investigative committee be formed to look at claims that Wallid was discriminated against because of his ethnicity. He said he had video evidence which showed the policemen on site hitting Wallid and dragging him violently.

Maj.-Gen. Yoram Halevy, police commander of the southern district, on Wednesday told a Knesset panel that the officers at the scene didn’t know or care about the man’s ethnic background, and acted strictly according to the rules.

Police protocol is to arrest anyone suspected of involvement in such an incident so as to not allow perpetrators to evade arrest posing as victims, even if they’re injured, Halevy said. “At no given moment did the police know the man was Bedouin,” he stated, adding that a second, Jewish, man on site was also taken away in handcuffs.

It was the quick response of the policemen that provided the critically injured Wallid with life-saving medical treatment, Halevy added.

At the meeting of the Knesset Internal Affairs Committeee, Halevy acknowledged that police officers were wrong to fire into a bathroom stall where Alon was holed up with a hostage. He said officers didn’t know anyone was in the stall with him.

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