An Israeli settler suspected of kicking and wounding a French Catholic nun in Jerusalem will go on trial for assault motivated by hostility towards a religious group, Israel's Justice Ministry said Thursday. The assault on the nun, a 48-year-old researcher at Jerusalem's French School of Biblical and Archaeological Research, occurred on Mount Zion, just outside the Old City.
The suspect is a 36-year-old from a settlement in the occupied West Bank named Peduel. He was arrested since April 2 and the prosecution has asked that he remain in detention until the trial, the ministry said in a statement. The man faces a charge of assault resulting in injuries, motivated by hostility toward a religious group.
Surveillance footage from the scene showed an attacker rushing toward the nun, who was dressed in a white habit and black veil, and violently pushing her to the ground, her head hitting a stone block. The man leaves, only to return and kick her before being stopped by a passer-by.
The French consulate in Jerusalem condemned the attack, demanding that the man behind it be brought to trial. At the time, the Faculty of Humanities at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, in a statement expressed "profound shock and condemnation," and deplored the increasingly common nature of the attack. "This is not an isolated incident, but part of a troubling pattern of rising hostility towards the Christian community and its symbols," the faculty said.
