Footage shows Israeli police dog mauling Palestinian man

By Awad Rajoub
RAMALLAH, Palestine (AA) – A video footage on Wednesday showed an Israeli police dog mauling a Palestinian man during his arrest.

In a statement, the Palestinian Commission of Detainees Affairs accused Israeli forces of deliberately letting the dog maul the young Palestinian although he was not resisting arrest.

"The occupation army deliberately let a police dog maul the young man, Malik Mualla, and terrify him,” the commission said.

It noted that the incident took place on February 14 when Israeli forces arrested the 19-year-old in Umm al-Sharait neighborhood in the city of Al-Bireh in the occupied West Bank.

The commission said the arrest took place when Israeli forces raided an industrial facility where the detainee works as a guard.

The video, filmed at night, shows the young man raising his hands as a sign of not resisting the arrest while soldiers aimed their rifles at him but yet the soldiers allowed the dog to briefly assault him before they shielded him.

Qadri Abu Bakr, the commission’s chairman, condemned the "repeated barbaric and criminal attacks against the Palestinian people while being arrested and taken away by occupation forces."

He accused the Israeli army of “deliberately using excessive force and severe abuse” when conducting arrest operations in various Palestinian cities, estimating that 99% of those detained as being “subjected to one or more forms of torture, repression, and physical and psychological abuse."

According to Palestinian estimates, there are 4,500 Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons, including 34 women and 180 children, and around 500 being held under Israel’s administrative detention policy, which allows holding Palestinians without charge or trial.

*Writing by Ibrahim Mukhtar in Ankara