Published 26/05/2011 11:13

Ashraf, in a photo provided by his family. [MaanImages]
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — “Ashraf was as usual near the shop. I heard a gunshot outside and then my son was shouting and trying to open the door. More than ten soldiers were behind him,” his mother told Ma’an on Wednesday.
The day before, 23-year-old Ashraf Muhammad Suleiman Mousa, who lives with a developmental disability and has the cognitive ability of a four-year-old, was assaulted by Israeli forces apparently searching for stone thrower on Tuesday evening, witnesses said.
Ashraf, from the town of Al-Khader southwest of Bethlehem, was socializing with a shop owner, who told Ma’an the young man was near the door to the street when three military jeeps entered the area near the football stadium.
“They seem to have been attacked with stones somewhere,” he said assuming the jeeps were in town looking for the boys who threw the stones. “Ahraf was afraid, so he ran away to his home some fifty meters away.”
When Ashraf ran, the shopkeeper said, soldiers fired one shot into the air.
Communicating in his own form of sign language, Ashraf explained that he was handcuffed, shackled and blindfolded by the soldiers when they caught up with him at home.
Ashraf’s mother, 42-year-old Karima said that when her son arrived at the door to the home the soldiers ran up on foot behind him.
“They grabbed him, tackled him to the ground and started beating him mercilessly. They trod him with their military shoes. I tried by all means to tell them he was disabled. I tried to speak to them in English, but all they did was order me to go inside. Then they cuffed Ashraf’s hands and legs, blindfolded him and took him to the jeep. I brought a medical report to show it to the soldiers, but they did not even look at it.”
In distress, Karima called her neighbors who came about half an hour later to check up on the situation, bringing with them a Hebrew speaker.
Karima, whose husband lives and works in Saudi Arabia, lives alone with her five children, the eldest of whom is in university, said the wait was agonizing.
A neighbor finally succeeded in communicating to the soldiers that Ashraf was disabled and the matter was a misunderstanding.
An hour after his detention, Ashraf was released, witnesses said. “He came out of the jeep shouting and shivering,” his mother said.
Israeli military officials were contacted for comment, but were unable to provide information.

May 26, 2011 
































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