MK Tibi pans police for manhandling East Jerusalem youth with Down syndrome

Yesterday a video circulated showing Border Police forcibly handling a youth with down syndrome in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

Speaking to Channel 12 now, Joint List MK Ahmad Tibi says wryly: “It’s surprising they didn’t shoot him.” He notes that Muhammad Qara was a classmate of Iyad Halak, an autistic man who was chased down and shot dead by police in East Jerusalem in 2020 after they mistook a phone in his hands for a gun.

לא, הם לא באמת עושים את זה?? צעיר עם תסמונת דאון מתחנן שלא ייגעו בו השוטרים לא מרפים. שיח ג'ראח pic.twitter.com/bYjkRYuhQu

— Yossi Eli (@Yossi_eli) February 21, 2022

“The face of a person with Down syndrome is apparent even to cops,” Tibi says, “and despite this, despite the shouts of people nearby to leave him alone… they continued to push, to try to hold him. He was very frightened.”

The police have said Qara called for harming Jews and cops attempted to remove him from the scene. They said he was handed over to a relative who took him away, and that he was not detained due to his condition.

Tibi expresses doubt that Qara was inciting, noting that it is difficult to understand his speech, but “even if he did say such things, they could see who the person was, and they treated him brutally and violently anyway.”