British activist detained by Israeli settlers in West Bank village incident

A British citizen who was deported from Israel says he was locked in a shed and held at gunpoint by Israeli settlers after trying to prevent them from entering a Palestinian village.

Finn Joughin, 22, was detained by Israeli authorities after the settlers accused him of assaulting a child near the village of Umm al-Khair in the Masafer Yatta region, police said. His lawyer emphatically denies the allegation.

Footage posted online appears to show Mr Joughin attempting to block a boy trying to pass by a fence. Another clip shows him being dragged away by settlers wielding large guns.

“It all happened so quickly. I was definitely in some form of shock as it was going on,” he told The Independent. “It took me a while to properly realise that I was being dragged away, surrounded by men with huge rifles. It was a scary moment.

“Maybe naively, I believed that it was all going to work itself out because I knew I had done nothing wrong, and that I was going to be able to talk my way to freedom. But once they started being pretty nasty with me, I realised I was in the hands of potentially dangerous people.”

Israeli police told the BBC that a foreign national was detained by security personnel in the settler community who accused him of committing “an indecent act against a minor”. They said the suspect was transferred to their custody before the case was moved to the Population and Immigration Authority for review.

Mr Joughin’s lawyer, Inbar Shaked Vardi, said the footage is “very clear that Finn was merely standing in place while the settler children approached him and pushed up against him in order to trespass into the village”. She says police only questioned Mr Joughin on suspicion of common assault, not of an indecent act.

The Israeli military told The Independent that its troops arrived on the scene to detain Mr Joughin, before it transferred the matter to Israeli police.

“This was carried out as part of ongoing cooperation and efforts to prevent provocative activity involving confrontations and disturbances,” the statement added.

Mr Joughin joined the ‘protective presence’ activists in August. These international activists, who often hail from Israel, the US and the UK, help protect Palestinian villages from settler attacks by recording incursions and acting as a “human barrier” between settlers and the Palestinians.

He had arrived in Hebron, southern West Bank, on 12 August to teach English, before hearing about the protective presence activism while speaking to others.

The 22-year-old said he was attempting to prevent a group of settlers entering Umm al-Khair - a village in the southern Masafer Yatta region which has suffered repeated attacks - before his arrest. The town was the site of the killing of Awdah Hathaleen last year, the father-of-three, activist, and consultant in the Oscar-winning No Other Land documentary.

The UK Foreign Office said it was aware of the reports and was “engaging with the Israeli authorities and providing consular assistance”.

In the footage online taken on Saturday, Mr Joughin was seen surrounded by settlers, using his knee to try and prevent a boy from passing by as they allegedly tried to enter the village.

Mr Joughin said that settlers began twisting his arm behind his back, before marching him away and locking him in a shed.

“I realised there were also two men in military uniform who were watching over the entire affair, and when I tried to plead with them for help, they told me to shut the f*** up,” he said.

The Independent has asked the Israeli military whether these men were soldiers or settlers dressed in military uniform.

“It was certainly a scary situation at that moment. I'd heard multiple stories of settler violence against both Palestinians and international activists. So I realised that something serious could happen, which was why I tried my best to remain calm and civil.”

Mr Joughin said the ringleader of the group accused him of having “friends in Iran” and being complicit in an attack on Israel.

He claimed that during his 30-minute captivity in the shed, there would always be a man on watch with an armed rifle guarding the door. The ringleader’s demeanour later became calmer, he added.

“He asked me if I was Jewish. He asked me if I was religious. I tried to talk to him on a rational level, saying, ‘Do you really believe that I hit anyone’. I could see that they were kind of nervous and unsure what really to do.”

Mr Joughin said Israeli police arrived later and arrested him.

Ms Vardi said she has not received any formal update on the case from Israeli police - but given his deportation, they expected it would be dropped.

Ms Vardi, who has represented several Israeli and international activists arrested in the West Bank, claimed that settlers have been known to bring children with them while trying to enter Palestinian villages.

Similar previous cases have resulted in Israeli activists being interrogated by police for allegedly assaulting children in similar cases. However, Ms Vardi said this is the first such case she remembers that involved an international activist.

Posting videos of children online is also highly regulated by strict child protection laws, she said, making it difficult for activists to post and share footage of any attacks or actions by settlers who are accompanied by children.

Belal, a Palestinian activist from Hebron who did not want to share his full name for safety reasons, said it is “not uncommon” for children and teenagers to be used to help defend their outposts.

He said the children sometimes “come from broken homes, or the care system, and are pretty much exploited by Israeli settlers”, adding: “If anything, you end up feeling pity for them.”

Mr Joughin, who is currently studying in London but has returned to his parents’ house in Brighton, added that his ordeal was “really nothing in comparison to the things that are happening to the Palestinians here, every day, every week, arbitrary detention, no phone calls, no clean water or food, ruthless beatings”.

He said: “I’m deeply pleased that I’m free but this goes on all the time and the village is under permanent threat from settlers, so it’s really a very small part of an ongoing and unending story.”