Attorney Chaim Bleicher from the Honenu legal advocacy organization contacted the police to demand the arrest of an Arab driver for the bus company Extra, who allegedly assaulted a Jewish passenger in Jerusalem after she asked to disembark from the bus.
According to Bleicher, the driver closed the doors and even threatened to run her over. The attorney is demanding that the driver be arrested and put on trial for several severe crimes.
In a letter to the police, Bleicher presents his client's account of the events: "My client boarded the bus at the Har Nof terminal. The driver began to shout that it was the last stop. When my client tried to leave through the front door while asking the driver to speak respectfully, the suspect closed the bus door and began to hurl sexual and vulgar curses at her in Arabic.
"After that, the suspect opened the door, and as my client attempted to leave the bus, the suspect intentionally closed the doors on my client's body while she was 'half in, half out,' and repeated it several times. As a result, my client was physically assaulted using the doors and suffered bodily pain. After she managed to extricate herself, she stood in front of the bus and demanded that the driver identify himself. In response, the suspect began driving in her direction while the bus physically hit her, forcing my client to hold on to the moving vehicle to avoid being run over. Only her resourcefulness and cries for help prevented a major disaster," Bleicher recounted.
He added, "The hostile acts department at Honenu constantly receives complaints about hate crimes by minority bus drivers against Jewish passengers; assaults, threats, intimidation, unnecessary emergency breaking leading to injury, and more. This is a dangerous phenomenon that attests to the potential danger that those bus drivers pose, as their safety and the passengers' safety are in their hands. We demand that the law and enforcement authorities deal with the criminal drivers to the full extent of the law since such drivers are ticking time bombs."