Israeli envoy called over 'assault on diplomats'

By Hani Hazaimeh

AMMAN - Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh on Wednesday summoned Israeli Ambassador to Jordan Daniel Nevo and expressed the government's “utter rejection and condemnation” after two Jordanian diplomats in Tel Aviv “were assaulted by Israeli police”.

"We asked the Israeli government to deal with this incident in accordance with diplomatic norms and take all measures to ensure that such incidents never happen again," Judeh told The Jordan Times yesterday.

He added that he called on the Israeli government, in a letter of protest handed to Nevo, to start an immediate investigation into the incident and inform the ministry of its outcomes accordingly.

Agence France-Presse yesterday quoted the Israeli police spokesperson, Micky Rosenfeld, as saying: “They [the diplomats] were questioned for a short period of time in the area where police were on patrol.”

“Their IDs and passports didn’t exactly match. They were released after a short time when things were cleared up.”

Rosenfeld said the Jordanian embassy staff were stopped in the Tel Aviv area and that the police were still investigating what they were doing in what he said was “the middle of nowhere”.

“As far as we’re concerned, that incident will be looked into. What they were doing walking around that specific neighborhood [has] nothing to do with their work,” he said.

25 November 2010

Source: The Jordan Times.
Link: http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=32071.