Yotam Berger and Jack Khoury : Israeli Army: Tamimi's Teen Cousin Admits Head Wounds Not Caused by Bullet, but by Bike Crash
The cousin of Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi admitted during an interrogation that he was not shot in his head during clashes last year, but rather was injured in a bike accident, Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, wrote Tuesday in a Facebook post in Arabic.
Mohammed Tamimi, the 15-year-old
cousin of Ahed – who was caught on film slapping Israel Defense Forces
soldiers on December 15, 2017, and is currently facing trial – was shot
minutes before that incident in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh.
At the time, Tamimi was seriously wounded and was operated on by doctors who extracted bullet fragments from his skull. Tamimi was arrested Monday in his village, along with nine other Palestinian youths, half of whom are minors.
Tamimi was released after his interrogation. Writing on Almunasseq, COGAT's Arabic-language Facebook page, Mordechai
challenged the original story behind Tamimi's head injury. He wrote that
while being questioned by police, the teen admitted that, as opposed to
claims by his father that he was injurred by rubber-tipped bullets
during clashes, "he was injured while he was riding his bicycle and fell
off it."
Writing on Almunasseq, COGAT's Arabic-language Facebook page, Mordechai
challenged the original story behind Tamimi's head injury. He wrote that
while being questioned by police, the teen admitted that, as opposed to
claims by his father that he was injurred by rubber-tipped bullets
during clashes, "he was injured while he was riding his bicycle and fell
off it." However, the version of events described by
Mordechai does not coincide eyewitness accounts obtained by Haaretz,
according to which the day Tamimi was injured, IDF forces were firing at
Palestinians who were throwing stones, with the aim of dispersing them.
Tamimi, witnesses said, was standing on a ladder behind a wall and was
hit in the head the moment he raised it above the ledge.
Haaretz has also seen Tamimi's CAT scan and images of the bullet fractures removed from his skull.
Residents
of Nabi Saleh said Tamimi told the police that he had been hurt in a
bike accident and not shot by the IDF so that he would be released after
being detained. They said he was scared and worried that if he said he
had been shot, there would be evidence against him and his detention
would be extended.https:/After Mordechai's post was published, the Tamimi
family responded that "what began as a bizarre attempt to prove that we
are not even a family has deteriorated into a denial of reality."
In
response to request to comment from Haaretz, army sources said that
Tamimi was questioned by the police, and they cannot confirm the origins
of his injury.
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