Honenu Attorney Chayim Bleicher; Photo credit: Honenu
Please see here a list of posts relating to cases in which Honenu provided legal counsel to victims of antisemitic attacks in Jerusalem. For additional cases in which Honenu assisted victims of attacks by Arab bus drivers please see here and here.
Wednesday, June 30, 2021, 11:06 For an inexplicable reason, without any investigation, the Lev HaBira Police Station in Jerusalem decided to close a case against an Arab bus driver who brutally attacked a hareidi passenger trying to board his bus. With the assistance of Honenu, the passenger filed an appeal for the reopening of the case.
The hareidi passenger was standing at a bus stop outside of the ICC in Jerusalem waiting for a bus to Tzfat on L’ag B’Omer, this year April 29-30. When the bus, which was chartered to provide supplemental service to the Nativ Express bus company, arrived, a woman who had been waiting at the stop got on. When the hareidi passenger attempted to get on after her, the driver refused to let him board the bus.
The passenger called the driver’s attention to empty seats on the bus, but he still refused to allow the passenger onto the bus. Suddenly, without any prior warning, the driver kicked the passenger hard in the face. The passenger, who was standing on the top step of the bus, fell backwards off of all of the steps and at the last moment grabbed the handrail, which prevented him from falling into the street. The driver got out of his seat, stepped down to the stunned passenger, and then choked him with one hand, using his thumb and forefinger. He did not stop until someone who noticed what was happening ran towards him.
Immediately afterwards, the passenger called the police, who came and took the driver’s details. Later on, the passenger filed a complaint against the driver with the Lev HaBira Police in Jerusalem. To the passenger’s great surprise, the police informed him that “a decision has been reached to close the case without a criminal investigation on the grounds that: the circumstances of the matter are, as a whole, not appropriate for opening an investigation, because criminal proceedings are not an appropriate framework for investigating this incident.”
Honenu Attorney Chayim Bleicher, who is representing the passenger, filed an appeal with the Lev HaBira Police against closing the case. When a journalist from Galei Tzahal (Army Radio) asked about the incident, the police informed her that the case would be reopened. However an official announcement has not yet been sent to either Bleicher or his client.
Honenu Attorney Chayim Bleicher: “The complaint was over an extremely serious incident, an incident in which a public bus driver attacked a man in view of all of the passengers, and also tried to choke him. It is not clear how such a serious case was closed without investigation. We demand that the police reopen the investigative case and bring the driver to trial.”