5 Israeli Soldiers Arrested for Beating Palestinians in Custody (VIDEO)

Israeli soldiers arrest a Palestinian youth. (Photo: ActiveStills.org)

Four Israeli soldiers and an Israeli army officer have been arrested for beating two Palestinians who were being held in custody.

Israel’s Military Police arrested the five personnel on Wednesday and referred them to a military court in order to remand them in custody, the Times of Israel reported, citing a statement from the Israeli army.

The soldiers are accused of beating two Palestinians who were arrested earlier this month near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank. The pair were arrested during a manhunt for the alleged perpetrator of an attack on Israeli soldiers near the illegal outpost of Givat Assaf in December, which came amid a week of heightened violence and Israeli crackdowns across the occupied West Bank.

The soldiers are suspected of beating the detained Palestinians as revenge for December’s attack since both sets of soldiers belong to the same unit – the Netzah Yehuda Battalion of the Kfir Brigade, which is stationed in the occupied West Bank.

This is not the first time the Netzah Yehuda Battalion – an ultra-Orthodox unit based near the northern West Bank city of Jenin – has been accused of right-wing violence against Palestinians.

In 2016, a Netzah Yehuda soldier was sentenced to nine months in prison for torturing Palestinian suspects with electric shocks. According to Israel’s military prosecutors, the soldier in question arrested a Palestinian near Jenin in October 2015, before blindfolding, handcuffing and beating him. The soldier then attached electrodes to the Palestinian’s neck and shocked him, increasing the voltage when the man begged the soldier to stop.

In 2015, an Israeli soldier from the same battalion was sentenced to 21 days in military prison for celebrating the murder of 18-month-old Palestinian Ali Dawabsheh at a wedding.

In a video, wedding guests could be seen dancing with guns, knives and a pretend Molotov cocktail, as well as holding and stabbing a photo of Ali.

(MEMO, PC, Social Media)

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