Police arrest suspect for desecrating Jerusalem Muslim cemetery with donkey head

Israeli police on Wednesday said they had arrested an Israeli suspected of having desecrated a Muslim cemetery in the Jerusalem Old City by hanging a donkey’s head.

Describing the 35-year-old as “unbalanced,” police said he was arrested after they were alerted that a man had “broken the law and disrupted public order by hanging the head of a donkey” at the cemetery.

Israeli settlers storm the Bab al-Rahma cemetery in occupied Jerusalem and hang a "donkey's head" on a grave. pic.twitter.com/dmwf2LnBge

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) December 27, 2023

Photographs circulating on social media showed the head of a donkey hanging from a fence of the cemetery.

Police said the man was carrying an axe at the time of his arrest, adding that another suspect who allegedly had helped in taking him there was also in custody.

“A Jewish extremist slit the throat of a donkey today at the Golden Gate cemetery before hanging it over the Muslim graves there,” the Waqf Islamic affairs council said in a statement. “It was a serious desecration of one of the main historic Muslim cemeteries in Jerusalem.”