JERUSALEM, July 12 (UPI) -- Israeli troops arrested a 5-year-old Palestinian boy for allegedly throwing rocks at a car in Hebron, the boy's family said.
Portions of the arrest were caught on camera by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem and posted on YouTube Thursday, The Jerusalem Post reported. B'Tselem said the incident happened Tuesday afternoon.
The boy, identified as Wadi'a Maswadeh, is seen in the video being put into an Israeli army vehicle. Soldiers went to his home and told his mother they wanted to bring him to Palestinian police, B'Tselem said.
The boy's mother said she would not allow that to happen until her husband got home.
"An officer came up to me and ordered me to get my son, Wadi'a," Karem Maswadeh, the boy's father, told B'Tselem. "A soldier standing next to the officer showed me a stone and claimed that my son had thrown it, and that it had hit the car of a settler who was driving north, near Abed checkpoint. I tried to persuade the officer not to take Wadi'a to the DCO [district coordination office], but he said that if I didn't bring him, I'd be arrested... I went inside the house and got Wadi'a, who was hiding there. He was crying."
The father and son walked to the police station, where Karem Maswadeh says he was handcuffed and blindfolded until Palestinian police officers released them.
"The footage clearly shows that this was not a mistake made by an individual soldier, but rather conduct that, to our alarm, was considered reasonable by all the military personnel involved, including senior officers," B'Tselem Director Jessica Montell wrote in the organization's letter to the Judea and Samaria legal adviser.
