Bonn attack victim slams ‘brutal’ police
A JEWISH professor who was wrongly arrested following an antisemitic attack in Germany has accused police of conspiring to deflect blame for their brutal treatment of him.
Yitzhak Melamed was left bleeding and with broken glasses after officers pushed him to the ground and handcuffed him — after mistaking him for the assailant.
The attacker, a 21-year-old GermanPalestinian man named only as BZ, repeatedly knocked the kippah off Prof Melamed’s head while he was walking with a colleague in the city’s Hofgarten park in July 2018. He was jailed on Tuesday.
Prof Melamed said that while the attack on him had been unpleasant, “it was negligible in comparison with the brutality of the Bonn policemen.”
He wrote on Facebook: “In the following months, the Bonn police and political authorities did everything within their power to deflect the blame from the brutality of the German state agents, assign that blame to BZ, and use the incident to incite animosity against minorities and immigrants.
“As part of this attempt, the police even tried to frame BZ for the head wounds they, not he, had caused me.”
He said he had boycotted the trial because he had not been allowed to provide testimony, despite his frequent requests.
BZ was jailed to four-and-a-half years in prison after being convicted on several charges in addition to the attack in Bonn, including robbery and abusive language.
Prof Melamed described last summer how the attacker had grabbed his Yitzhak Melamed was left bruised
kippah and thrown it to the ground on three occasions shouting, “No. You are not allowed to have the yarmulke here” and, “No Jews in Germany”.
But the attacker began to flee as police arrived on the scene and, when Prof Melamed gave chase, officers apprehended the wrong man.
“I didn’t have much time to wonder as almost immediately four or five policemen with heavy guard jumped over me,” he wrote at the time.
“They pushed my head into the ground, and then while I was totally incapacitated and barely able to breathe. They started punching my face.
“After a few dozen punches, I started shouting in English that I was the wrong person.”
Bonn Police Chief Ursula Brohl-Sowa said it had been “a terrible and regrettable misunderstanding” and apologised to Prof Melamed in person the morning after the incident last year.
German prosecutors dropped an investigation into the police officers’ conduct in March, saying the tactics were “justified measures under police law”.
They tried to deflect the brutality of German state agents