Policeman guilty of assaulting black border guard

A police officer was sentenced to three months’ community service, a suspended sentence of six months in prison and a thousand shekel fine for striking an off-duty Border Police officer.

The assailant, Liran Chachami, said he believed the border policeman, who was born in Ethiopia before immigrating to Israel, was an illegal African migrant who had stolen the cellphone he was using at the time Chachami struck him, the MyNet news site reported Sunday.

According to the complaint, in September 2012 Chachami and two other officers approached the young Border Police officer, who was in civilian attire at the time, near the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station, accused him of stealing the phone he was holding and demanded he show them his passport.

When the plaintiff denied the accusation and asked why they needed to see his passport, the officers dragged him by the neck and collar to an adjacent building.

Once he realized the police officers thought he was in Israel illegally, the victim quickly showed his Israeli driver’s license. In response the officers pushed him up against a wall and slapped him across the face twice.

According to the complaint, when the officers realized the victim was a Border Police officer they demanded to know “What you are doing in a place like this?”

The officers were referring to the fact that many asylum seekers from Africa live in the neighborhood where the plaintiff was assaulted.

Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court judge Daniel Be’eri found Chachami guilty, writing in his decision, “There was no justification for bringing the plaintiff to that [building] entrance, and there was no just cause to search the victim against his wishes…. There is no way to rationalize the actions of the defendant who hit another man without even a trace of justification.”

Chachami appealed the ruling last week.