JERUSALEM, March 18 (JMCC) -  A 14-year old boy run over by an Israeli police car says he was subsequently beaten and intimidated by the police.

In a statement to the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights, Mohammad Qanbar tells how he was struck by an Israeli patrol car in Ras al-Amoud in occupied Jerusalem on March 10.

Police have contested his account, saying that a Palestinian driving a white Subaru that fled the scene is responsible for the accident.

‘NOBODY CARED’

The ninth grader is frightened after being threatened not to talk about the incident.

Clashes were underway in the city, as Palestinians protested an Israeli plan to invest in two religious shrines in the West Bank.

“I was watching the clashes with my brother and the neighbors’ kid when an Israeli vehicle came speeding toward us.”

“First I was thrown into the air, then I hit the ground, and then it ran me over again. The men in the car arrested me and hit me on the face while I was the car.”

“I was crying from the pain but nobody cared.”

‘NOT INTERESTED’

Called to the police station, Mohammad’s mother and uncle found him lying on the ground in an interrogation room, pale and in tears.

“I was forbidden to speak to him,” said Jamil Qanbar, the boy’s uncle. “I told the interrogator I didn’t want to know the reason for the arrest, I just wanted to know who ran him over and why was he left like this without treatment. It is inhumane.”

The family will file a complaint against Israeli police for allegedly hitting Mohammad with a police car and then leaving him lying on the ground of the police station for over an hour without treatment, says Qanbar.

Mohammad’s foot was fractured in three places. At night, he sleeps fitfully, suffering from chills and fever.

“We’re fighting a state of war -- we’re not interested in these things,” Qanbar says the interrogator responded when asked why he had not queried Mohammad about the car that struck him.

Mohammad told police in the presence of his uncle that a white Subaru struck him and escaped.

Only the next morning did he tell his mother that he was threatened by the interrogator not to disclose that a police vehicle had run him down.

The Israeli human rights group Yesh Din says that officials rarely press charges against soldiers for harming Palestinians or their property.

Even when investigations are launched, the pace of the probe often prohibits resolution, the organization found in a study of more than 100 cases.