Injured student; Photo credit: Honenu
Please click here for a list of posts relating to cases in which Honenu provided legal counsel to victims of antisemitic attacks in Jerusalem.
Thursday, March 28, 2019, 12:53 Following increasing suspicions that the car-ramming incident on Tuesday night at the Jaffa Gate was a terror attack, Honenu Attorney Chayim Bleicher, who is representing the injured students, demanded an investigation and the detention of the terrorists. He explained that anyone who heard the testimony of one of the injured students unequivocally understands that the incident was a terror attack, not a traffic accident as the police are claiming.
Bleicher: “In the incident the car jumped the curb, ran over two yeshiva students, and then went into reverse and attempted to run them over again. The two terrorists exited the car shouting and cursing in Arabic, and beat one of the injured students who was unable to escape. If that is not a terror attack then what is?”
“We know that at least one suspect was detained and we heard rumors that he has been released. The police are attempting a cover-up and are calling it an accident. It was not a traffic accident!” emphasized Bleicher. “I do not know how the police investigated the terrorist, but I know what the injured student recounted. He said that he was lying there wounded and could not do anything, and then they [the terrorists] came and beat him. We are shocked by this attempt at a cover-up.”
Bleicher level criticism at the police conduct: “We do not know for whom the police are working. Are they working for our security or for other interests? We demand an investigation now, the detention of terrorists, and treatment of the incident as a terror attack in every way. If that is not done, then the security of all of us will be harmed. Enough with the silence and enough with the cover-up.”
On Wednesday, March 27, Bleicher sent a letter to the Jerusalem District Police Commander, demanding that the terrorists be investigated on suspicion of attempted murder and also demanding an “investigation by the Central Unit of the Yehuda and Shomron Police and the GSS and the detention of abettors and additional accomplices to terror.”
The car-ramming attack occurred on the night of Tuesday, March 26, near the Jaffa Gate, opposite Teddy Park. Two yeshiva students stood on the sidewalk, waiting for the red light to change, when suddenly a car driven by an Arab driver jumped the curb onto the sidewalk and hit them. One of the injured students testified that the driver backed up and tried to run them over again. After he did not succeed, the two terrorists exited the car and beat the already injured students, kicked them and then fled the scene.
One of the injured students Avraham Arend, a 28-year-old resident of the Old City of Jerusalem is still being hospitalized. He described the incident: “We walked down to Jaffa Gate last night, a friend and I. We reached the traffic light by Jaffa Gate, and then the car came. It smacked into us and we fell onto the ground.”
Arend added that the driver returned to hit them again, and when he did not succeed, the terrorists exited the car and hit them: “After that, he went into reverse and tried again. Then they [the terrorists] got out of the car, while we were on the ground, and started to hit and kick us. They got into the car and fled. Then the MDA [medics] arrived and evacuated us to the hospital. At the hospital they saw that my knee was broken and I needed an operation.”