BERLIN — A German court on Monday convicts a Palestinian man from Syria, on assault charges for lashing out with his belt at an Israeli man wearing a kippa.
Knaan al-Sebai, 19, is sentenced to four weeks’ juvenile detention, but is allowed to walk free, having already served over two months in pre-trail detention.
“I made a mistake and I have learned from it,” he tells the Berlin court, after a trial in which he had denied thatthe April 17 attack was motivated by anti-Semitism.
A video of the street assault, filmed by the victim on his smartphone, sparked widespread public revulsion as it spread on social media, and triggered street rallies in solidarity with Jews.
The footage shows the attacker, one of a group of three, shouting “yahudi” — Jew in Arabic — before striking the victim, leaving him injured.
The victim, a 21-year-old student, later revealed that he is not Jewish, but an Israeli Arab named Adam Armush, who was walking at the time with a German-Moroccan friend aged 24.
Armush, a veterinary student, said they had wanted to test whether wearing a kippa was safe in the fashionable inner Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg.
— AFP
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