Border Police officer indicted for beating reporter in Jerusalem’s Old City last year

Prosecutors file an indictment against a Border Police officer accused of assaulting a journalist last year with a baton, breaking his arm.

The defendant, Yazan Joaeh from Maghar, an Arab city in northern Israel, had been securing an area near the scene of a terror attack in the Old City in February last year.

Police ordered journalists covering the event — in which a 16-year-old Palestinian tried to stab several police officers — to leave the area. However, one reporter, Itamar Cohen of the news platform News360, kept coming back to the scene.

Rather than detain Cohen, prosecutors say the indicted officer ran at him and started beating him with a baton, striking his lower body without relenting, even after knocking him to the ground.

When Cohen begged to be taken to the hospital, the defendant ignored his request and asked: “You want some more?” then continued to batter him, according to the indictment.

Joaeh then told the reporter — who sustained leg injuries and a broken arm — to call an ambulance on his own. He is charged today in the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court with assault causing bodily harm.