By Heba Aslan
JERUSALEM, March 30, 2018 (WAFA) – Hatem,10, and Ameer Abu Rmeleh, 8, were on Thursday on their way to the grocery just outside their home in the neighborhood of Beit Hanina, in occupied East Jerusalem, to buy some items when all of a sudden Israeli intelligence cops dressed in civilian clothes chased them.
The chase lasted until the two were back home when the cops raided their family home and arrested them without showing an arrest warrant. The intelligence claimed that the two were involved in the throwing of stones at illegal Israeli settlers’ vehicles.
“I arrived at the home after [the cops] had raided it. I tried to prevent the arrest, but four Israeli policemen surrounded me and asked me to accompany my children,” says Mohammad Abu Rmeleh, father of the two children.
At Nabi Yaqoub investigation center, on the outskirts of of Beit Hanina, the two brothers remained under interrogation for an hour and a half in which they were interrogated individually and in the presence of their father. They were questioned about the reasons for their presence at the street where the grocery is located, and who they saw and other details.
The story of the Abu Rmeleh children, though not documented by cameras, was the second of its kind in less than two days, when a day earlier in Hebron city, in southern West Bank, two Israeli soldiers briefly detained a three-year-old kid. The kid kept on crying until a young man was able to rescue him from the soldiers after a quarrel with them.
Also a week ago, a child was also arrested by Israeli police in Al-Tour neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem. He was charged with throwing Molotov cocktails at Israeli settlers and police, and was released later.
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), there are 7875 Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails, including 376 children, 62 of them females.
The Wadi Hilweh Information Center in Jerusalem has also documented the detention of 170 children by Israeli forces during January and February, including 10 children under the age of 12 years.
M.N
