Testimonies

Muhammad 'Abd al-Wahab, Student

Last Thursday [17 January], around 10:30 A.M., I left my house with friends from school, Walid and Zayed, to go to Ramot, which is near our village. We went looking for work. We are on vacation from school now and we need to earn some money to buy school supplies. We walked along the wadi that separates our village from Ramot. It took us about twenty minutes to get there. We started knocking on doors of houses and asked the people if they had cleaning or gardening work for us. My brothers do these kinds of jobs and I thought it would be easy for my friends and me to find work.

After about thirty minutes, a few police patrol vehicles pulled up. They were driving fast and stopped alongside us. A few of the police officers, in blue uniforms, got out and grabbed Zayed and me. A policewoman who had a light complexion and blond hair held us. Shortly after that, another policeman came and took Zayed. He was bald, dark-skinned, heavyset, and average height. The policewoman pushed me and asked me what I was doing in the neighborhood. I told her why we had come. She told me to sit by the fence of one of the houses.

After about five minutes, the bald officer took me toward a garbage container on the street and put me between it and the fence. He slapped me hard in the face a few times. Then he punched me twice in the stomach. That hurt a lot. He cuffed me and took me toward the patrol vehicle. Walid was sitting by the vehicle and the policeman sat me down next to him.  A few minutes later, they put Walid and me into the vehicle and took us to the Russian Compound. They left us sitting there and we waited to be taken to the interrogation room.

While sitting there, I spoke with Walid and a policeman poured water from a bottle on my face and ordered me to keep quiet. A thin man with gray hair and dressed in civilian clothes kept going in and out of a room near us. Each time he passed by us, he swore at me, saying things like, “you bastard,” “I'll screw your mother,” things like that.

The guy in civilian clothes took me into the room and questioned me. He accused me of attempted robbery. I told him I had gone to Ramot to look for work. He threw a stapler at me. It hit me in the stomach. That hurt. About fifteen minutes later, he put me back in the corridor. Then he took my fingerprints and put me into the detention room. I was detained until the next morning, when they took me to court and then released me.

Muhammad Salah Jum'ah 'Abd al-Wahab, 15, is a student and a resident of Beit Iksa in al-Quds District. His testimony was given to Kareem Jubran at Walid ‘Awad's house on 21 January 2008.