Border Police officers charged with punching, beating, dragging East Jerusalem suspect

The Department for Internal Police Investigations (DIPI) files an indictment against two Border Police officers, Jarees Hilo and Sarel Avshara, for assaulting and injuring a suspect after having detained him, causing him to pass out as a result of his wounds.

According to the indictment, during a routine patrol in Jerusalem after midnight on March 8, 2023, four police officers came across a group of youths in the area of the A-Tur and Ras al Amud neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, who were “swearing and joking” inside a car parked close to a gas station.

One of the police officers requested that the youths show their identity cards, and when one of them refused, the officers conducted a body search and found pepper spray on him.

The youth was then detained and driven by the police officers to a nearby parking lot. During that time, two of the officers beat the suspect, punching him in the chest and face and hitting him over the head with an unidentified object, the indictment says.

When the patrol car got to the parking lot, the suspect refused to get out of the vehicle and was forcefully dragged out of the car by one of the police officers, being dragged across the ground.

He was then told to go home by one of the police officers, and he managed to make his way back to the gas station but lost consciousness when he arrived, having sustained internal bleeding around his left eye and on his forehead. He was subsequently taken to Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital for treatment.

Hilo and Avshara have been indicted over the incident, while the patrol car driver and the fourth officer have not been charged.

The indictment is the latest in a series of such charges leveled by DIPI against police officers for violent behavior since the Public Defender’s Office publicly rebuked DIPI for failing to crack down on the phenomenon at the end of June.