Two men indicted for acid attack of Nazareth teen

Relatives of girl who was seriously wounded, blinded in one eye, will face charges of sexual abuse, aggravated assault.

By BEN HARTMAN
Nazereth 521 (photo credit: Makbula Nassar )
Nazereth 521
(photo credit: Makbula Nassar )
Less than a month after a Nazareth teen was attacked with acid in her home, the district attorney for the northern region indicted two male relatives of the girl.
The attack left the victim seriously wounded and blind in one eye, with doctors battling to save her vision in the other.
The defendants, both of whom live next door to the girl, will face charges of sexual assault for abuses police say they carried out against the victim over a period of time before the assault. The older suspect, aged 51, was also charged with aggravated assault for throwing the acid in the girl’s face.
Police and the prosecutor’s office charge that the girl was attacked after the 51- year-old man found out that she was getting engaged to another man, which he feared “would cause her to become distant from him and he would be unable to have his way with her anymore,” according to the indictment.
The document states that on February 18 at 11:30 p.m., the man knocked on the girl’s window and when she opened it, he threw hydrochloric acid in her face and fled the scene.
According to the indictment, the man’s crimes “show great cruelty, to the extent to where he would stop at nothing in order to have his way with her, and show that he has no respect for human life.”
Attorney Said Hadad told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that his client, the 51- year-old man, has denied all the charges against him and was not at all connected to the incident.
Hadad added that his client was at home at the time of the attack and that there are witnesses who have attested to this fact.
When asked why police singled him out, he said his client had told him that he had been set up.
At Rambam Hospital last month, the victim’s mother said that her daughter had been harassed by the man for a long time, and that in recent months the harassment had gotten worse, and included threats to harm her physically.
She also said that her daughter had become engaged to a student living in Jordan shortly before the attack.
A gag order remains on the case banning publication of the names of the defendants or the victim and her family.