According to a local source, al-Seifi and al-Banna are still in detention. The source, who is not being named for safety reasons, told The Electronic Intifada that al-Banna was shot in the knee and arrested earlier this year.
Residents of Dheisheh say they continue to be targeted with raids and arrests by an Israeli army unit under the command of a notoriously aggressive officer with Israel’s domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet.
The officer, who goes by the alias “Captain Nidal,” has previously threatened to make “all youth in the camp disabled.”
In several testimonies gathered by The Electronic Intifada earlier this year, youth in the camp say Captain Nidal has been provoking them during confrontations and threatening them or causing severe physical harm, especially to their lower limbs.
“Break your head and kill you”
In November, Captain Nidal summoned Ahmad’s relative, Bilal al-Seifi, for interrogation at two different West Bank checkpoints.
After Bilal refused to go to Qalandiya checkpoint near Ramallah on Captain Nidal’s orders “due to fear for his life,” the officer proceeded to threaten the Palestinian youth and his family, according to Badil, a human rights group based in Bethlehem.
“I will come to you this time and break your head and kill you,” Captain Nidal reportedly told Bilal al-Seifi in a phone call. He added that he “would also kill his brothers, and arrest his sister and his mother,” Badil states.
Badil notes that the threats were made in late November, around the time Israeli forces shot dead a 48-year-old man at Qalandiya checkpoint, claiming he had tried to stab a soldier. No Israelis were injured.
Days earlier, Captain Nidal and a group of soldiers raided the al-Seifi family’s apartment complex – where Ahmad, who was arrested last week, also lives – and destroyed the family’s possessions.
The officer has threatened neighbors of the al-Seifi family, “informing them that they would be responsible if they saw Bilal in his home in the camp” and did not notify him, Badil states.
“This has created a very tense atmosphere in Dheisheh,” the source in the camp told The Electronic Intifada.
Badil says it is “very concerned by the continuous threats made by the Israeli occupying forces to Palestinian youth.”
“These actions by the Israeli forces are aimed to induce fear and are made all the more serious by the increase in the use of excessive force to suppress resistance and the targeting of Palestinian youth since mid-2016,” the group adds.
The Israeli violence and threats “make [residents] think about their kids in the streets – and about how unsafe they are even in their houses at night,” the source in Dheisheh added. …more here…The Electronic Intifada
