Police say they are checking if the burglar, a 22-year-old native of Sudan, also linked to other crimes in district.
By BEN HARTMANTel Aviv scene 311(photo credit: Joe Yudin)
A burglar stabbed a woman in the thigh and sexually assaulted her eightyear- old daughter after breaking into their house in south Tel Aviv early Wednesday morning, before he was fought off and badly beaten by the woman’s husband.Tel Aviv District Police said the man, a 22-year-old native of Sudan, was hospitalized in serious condition after he was beaten by the husband, but was released from the hospital several hours later without any serious injuries. The husband, a martial arts enthusiast, was questioned by police after the incident, but was released without charge, police said.Speaking to reporters outside his Yad Eliyahu home on Wednesday, the father said “I awoke to screams and saw my wife attacked and bleeding and an attacker who I don’t know. I jumped on him and I began to struggle with him to neutralize him and then I tied him up and called for help.”Several hours after the incident, the burglar was taken by police to the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court for a remand extension, where they sought to arraign him on charges of rape, assault and battery, breaking and entering, and theft.Police also said they would work to secure a gag order banning publication of the man’s identity or picture, saying that they are checking if he is linked with any other unsolved crimes in the district. As of press time, Tel Aviv police said the man is not cooperating with investigators, and for the most part does not understand what they are asking him.Police said the Sudanese man has been in Israel since 2011 and is homeless and out of work. They added that they will ask the court to keep him jailed until the end of the legal proceedings against him.Police said that at the moment it appears the man did not have the knife on him when he entered the apartment, rather that he took it from within the house.The mother and daughter were hospitalized at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, where they remained by late Thursday afternoon.The Yad Eliyahu neighborhood is one of a number of areas of south Tel Aviv that have seen an influx of tens of thousands of African migrants in recent years. In the past, highly publicized acts of violence by African migrants have been met with protests by residents, as well as physical attacks and acts of vandalism.On Wednesday morning, a Tel Aviv police spokeswoman put out an announcement to Israeli journalists asking them to exercise responsibility in their reporting of the incident.
By late afternoon, residents of south Tel Aviv announced plans to hold a demonstration at 7 p.m. in the Hatikva neighborhood.Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai commented on the incident on Wednesday, saying that “the incident that happened in south Tel Aviv is shocking and is something that we have warned about many times.”“The burden of the infiltrators has fallen on the residents of south Tel Aviv – they are the ones who suffer and their distress is understandable. They are forced to carry the absorption of large numbers of migrants alone. We must return the feeling of security to the residents of south Tel Aviv,” Huldai added.On Wednesday afternoon, Talia Mizrahi, a mother of two who lives next door to the single-family house where the break-in happened on a quiet, oneblock side street, said, “We had robberies in the past, but nothing like what we are dealing with today. These are people with nothing to lose, it’s scary to be here now.”On Wednesday night, a little over a hundred protesters marched around the Hatikva and Yad Eliyahu neighborhoods, calling on the government to deport all of the “infiltrators,” as well as “the lefties.”Most of the chants at the protest seemed to be directed at left-wing activists, as well as quite a few that targeted Huldai, calling on him to “go home.”The majority of the protesters appeared to be teenagers, many of whom made chimpanzee noises and shouted curses at African migrants walking by. On one occasion, a few protesters tried to storm an African-owned business, but were blocked by police, who then escorted the owners out of the premises, as they closed the shutters.No other violence was reported by press time.In late February, the Tel Aviv District Police released figures indicating a sharp rise in crime among the African migrant population in the district, home to the majority of the more than 60,000 migrants.Police figures said that there was a 53.2 percent increase in the number of Sudanese and Eritreans suspected in crimes and a 45% increase in the opening of criminal cases against them in 2012. The figures also stated that there were 1,048 Sudanese and Eritreans named as suspects in crimes in 2012, as opposed to 684 in 2011, and 1,092 criminal cases opened against them in 2012 as opposed to 2011.MK Ayelet Shaked (Bayit Yehudi), the head of a newly founded “anti-infiltrators” Knesset caucus meant to find ways to jail or deport African migrants, seized on Wednesday’s attack, saying “the legal system’s attempts to delay the solution to the infiltrators only worsens the problem and leads to difficult incidents like what happened tonight.”She added that Israel must find a third county to take the African migrant population, or deport them all to their home countries, Eritrea and Sudan, where they would be in danger of facing persecution upon return.On Tuesday, the High Court of Justice ruled that the government must explain by April 30 why the so-called Infiltrators Law must remain in effect, following a petition to the court by a group of Israeli NGOs. The law allows Israel to jail people caught crossing the border illegally for three years or more.
