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Home » Children »

Testimony: A.M.M.D.

 

Name:  A.M.M.D.
Age:  14
Date:  15 May 2019
Location:  Kafr Ni'meh, West Bank
Accusation:  Throwing stones

On 15 May 2019, a 14-year-old minor and his twin brother were arrested by Israeli soldiers from home at 5:00 a.m. and accused of throwing stones. He reports being informed of his basic legal rights under Israeli military law. He reports being released the same day without charge. 

On 9 May 2019, my father received a phone call during the day from an interrogator who introduced himself as “Adi”. Adi told my father to bring me and my twin brother to the polices station the following Thursday for questioning. My father thought it through and decided not to take us to the police station because he thought we were too young and he was worried about us.

On 15 May 2019, my mother woke me up at around 5:00 a.m. and told me Israeli soldiers had come to our home. Shortly afterwards we heard loud banging at our front door and it sounded like they were trying to force it open with a device. My father quickly opened the door and about 15 soldiers entered our home. They were accompanied by a commander and an intelligence officer.

The soldiers collected my parents’ identity cards and checked them and then told my father they wanted to arrest me and my brother. My father told the commander he wanted to accompany us but the commander refused. Then he gave my father two documents in Hebrew, with details about my arrest and my brother’s arrest. He asked my father to sign it but my father refused to sign.

Then they took me outside where they tied my hands behind my back with one plastic tie which was tight and painful. Then they blindfolded me and walked me and my brother a short distance to where a military jeep was waiting. They took me to the back of the jeep and made me sit on the metal floor. Inside the jeep soldiers swore at me and called me “a son of a whore”. They also swore at my religion.

The jeep drove to a nearby military base where I was examined by a doctor. The doctor removed the tie and the blindfold during the examination. I was left at the military base until around noon when I was taken for interrogation. At the military base they removed the blindfold and I was allowed to speak to a lawyer on a speaker phone. The lawyer told me to remain silent and not to confess or be afraid. The conversation lasted for about a minute and the interrogator was listening.

The interrogator first told me I had the right to remain silent and then accused me of throwing stones at settler cars during protests when Trump gave away East Jerusalem to Israel. He told me he had photographs of me and my brother and another boy throwing stones. I denied the accusation. The interrogator was aggressive and banged the table as he spoke to me and raised his voice. He questioned me for about 30 minutes and I continued to deny the accusation.

Then he named some boys and told me they were my friends and claimed they had confessed against me. I told him the boys were not my friends. I told him I was not involved in trouble making and that I spend most of my time at school and studying.

At the end of the interrogation I was shown documents written in Hebrew and asked to sign them but I did not sign. Then he took my photograph and fingerprints and told me to wait outside. Then my father came and I went home with my father and brother. We arrived home at around 7:00 p.m.