Egyptian UN mission staffers beat up two brothers protesting Cairo’s Gaza blockade

The victims were later arrested by local police and charged with assault.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Members of Egypt’s UN mission in New York beat up two brothers protesting Cairo’s blockade on Gazans who want to flee the war zone, NBC News reported Saturday.

A video of the incident, which occurred Wednesday, shows Yasin ElSammak, 22, and his 15-year-old brother, Ali, being dragged into the glass-doored building and beaten by several men.

“Bring somebody, they’re beating the kid with the chain,” someone can be heard yelling as the attackers punch the pair, who were shoved to the floor.

An acquaintance of Yasin, Husam Khaled, told the media outlet he had tried to chain-lock the doors to the mission, as protesters worldwide have done to Egyptian offices in response to Cairo’s refusal to shelter war refugees — a practice neighboring countries have allowed in other conflicts.

He then fled but returned when the ElSammaks didn’t follow, he said, and filmed the staffers’ assaulting the American Egyptian brothers.

“I was telling them, ‘It was me, let them go, they didn’t do anything,’” Khaled said, adding that he was ignored.

In another clip, Khaled confirms with a man exiting the building that they were acting on instructions from Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty.

Arab news outlets have reported that Abdelatty told Egypt’s ambassador to The Hague that staffers should “grab” and “drag” demonstrators into their missions and then call the authorities.

Angered by Egypt’s stance in the face of Gazan suffering, a young Egyptian recently chained Egypt’s Netherlands embassy gates to symbolize being locked in.

In a leaked phone call, Abdelatty allegedly said the ambassador had been “negligent in protecting the embassy” and that he would have taken the protester “by the neck, brought him into a room and called the police.”

This was what took place Wednesday, as the New York police entered the mission and arrested the ElSammaks.

They said Yasin was being charged with assault and “a 15-year-old” was being charged with assault and strangulation due to injuries allegedly sustained by two members of the Egyptian mission.

Their father, Akram, confirmed that the unnamed minor was his son, Ali, and said he was outraged over who were considered the victims.

“Our sons were kidnapped and beaten on American soil, and then the officers of the United States of America came to arrest my sons,” the naturalized American said.

Their only “crime,” he said, was to say, ‘Let the [Gazan] children eat, and give them medicine and water.’”

Yasin, Akram said, had a swollen throat and trouble breathing after being assaulted.

In court, charges against Ali were dropped, and Yasin’s was reduced to a misdemeanor, he noted.

On Sunday, the Qatari-owned, London-based Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper reported that Egypt is deploying about 40,000 soldiers, tanks and air defense systems along its border with Gaza to reinforce security forces already stationed at a high wall it had built soon after the Israel-Hamas war began, meant to stop refugees from crossing into the Sinai.

Egyptian officials said the buildup is meant to signal a categorical rejection of any attempts to push Palestinians across the border.

Israel has said that prior to its push to “free Gaza of Hamas” and end the war, it would establish humanitarian zones in the southern part of the Strip and allow hundreds of thousands of Gaza City civilians to flee there safely.