Anwar Katusa, the brother of the alleged child-rapist Mahmoud Nazmi Abed Alhamid Katusa from Deir Qaddis near Modi’in Illit, told Channel 12 news on Wednesday that the questions surrounding his brother’s case only get bigger each day, Maariv reported.
“For five days they questioned my brother and now they say they need to begin a new investigation,” he said. “Were they playing until now?”
The man said he is certain his brother did not commit the crime, citing that in his mind it doesn’t make sense for his brother to keep working as a janitor at the school the child was abducted from.
“Politicians talk and blame. Let’s wait until a judge decides,” he said.
In a criminal case that shocked the country Katusa was arrested on Monday for the alleged rage and abduction of a seven-year-old Jewish girl from a West Bank settlement.The girl pointed Katusa out as the man who assaulted her, yet the case is riddled with doubts starting with the written opinion of the child investigator who spoke with the girl and concluded her testimony contains inconsistencies, and ending with the police not sending the child’s underwear to a lab for a DNA examination.
Katusa began to weep when he entered the court on Wednesday when he saw his brother and son. “Where have you been all this time?” he asked.
The investigation had been opened for further materials following new information which might lead the police to find the alleged two other men who took part in the crime and a case with similar characteristics the police wishes to examine further.
Unnamed resources in the prosecution office said that unless a solid evidence is found linking Katusa and the victim, the case might be dropped, leading people to wonder where the real criminal might be at large.
Chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Avi Dichter took to Facebook on Monday, arguing that the criminals “would not dare to drag and rape a Palestinian child... [they did it] because she is Jewish. Because she is a girl!”
Dichter further shared a historical anecdote about how in 1944, pre-state Palmach fighters Yohai Ben-Non, Amos Horav and Yakovah Cohen castrated Araf Ahmed Shatawi, an Arab from Beisan (today Beit Shean) who had raped several Jewish women in the Jordan Valley, an example he feels should be followed. He called to “castrate their heads... and destroy their homes.”
Palestinians had issues with how Israeli politicians were quick to make “cynical usage of this serious crime, as if this man is a resistance activist.”