Agora

Jyllands-Posten, Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Imam apologized for assault on 11-year-old

By Erik Thomle and Martin Johansen

Teacher rescued the crying, bleeding boy after he had been kicked on Lykkeskolen in Århus.

When the 11-year old boy testified about Imam Ahmed Akkaris assault, his testimony differed from what he told the police.

He told the court how the angry Imam pulled his ears, knocked him to the ground and continued kicking him when he was down.

But the boy didn’t tell about how he twice was hit with fists, though the testimony of a teacher who witnessed the incident corroborated this. The teacher also told how she saw the helpless boy shielding himself while down. After the attack, his face was covered in blood.

Not for the faint of heart

The transcript of the proceedings are not for the faint of heart.

The verdict was jail for 40 days but it was made suspended because Akkari was a first-time offender, wrote the judge on March 22, 2001.

Despite the conviction, the Imam who is spokesman for the protesting Imams and organizations on the Muhammed issue, has had internships at public schools in Århus, has been a teacher at the Moslem Selam private school in Brabrand and tutored teenagers on how to be honorable Moslems in Denmark.

In the magazine Point of View, he wrote about a Moslem girl who wasn’t wearing a headscarf that she deserved being harassed and added that he would have helped her if she had worn a headscarf.

Ahmed Akkari’s younger sister who attended fourth grade on Lykkeskolen was wearing a headscarf November 3, 2000. Ahmed Akkari had been a subsitute teacher on the school and was studying to be a teacher on Århus Day- and Night-Teacher’s College, he explained to the court. He was at the school that day because he was supposed to go with the leader of the school Ahmad Moussa to Vejle.

Was defending his sister

While he was waiting, his sister came to him visibly distressed and red-faced. A class mate had pulled her hair and torn of her scarf, his statement to the court says.

The same boy had bothered his sister the year before, he added. The boy had kicked his sister, leaving a mark that took more than a week to disappear. Ahmed Akkari warned the boy then to never do that again.

Ahmed Akkari pled "not guilty" to assault but acknowledged that he grabbed the boy’s earlobes and pushed him to the ground. He denied having kicked or beaten the boy. He later went to the boy’s parents and apologized for the incident.

The 11-year old explained in detail how he was pulled by his ear, pushed to the ground and kicked in his hip area and his thigh.

When Prosecutor Birte Wirmfeldt read from the police report where the boy had reported that Ahmed Akkari hit him twice with his fists, the boy denied it. He had kind of been pushed over with a closed fist, he said.

He also told that he had neither hit Akkari’s sister or taken her scarf. But when he played ball with some friends he accidently hit her.

A Danish teacher witnessed the assault from a window in a classroom. She heard the boy crying out. He was on his knees and shielded his head with his hands. The Imam both kicked and hit the pupil. The teacher yelled at Akkari to stop and hurried to the boy who was sobbing helplessly. Blood was pouring down his face. The 11-year old boy ran home to his mother, the teacher told.

Banned and convicted

Immediately after the assault Ahmed Akkari told leader of the school Ahmad Moussa that he had "levered" the boy by his ears and pushed because he wanted to defend his sister. But he didn’t tell about kicking or hitting the boy, Moussa told.

In spite of this the Imam was banned from the grounds of Lykkeskolen.

Ahmed Akkari was convicted of violence by the penal code’s §244. The court based this on the boy having been kicked several times. The penalty was 40 days incarceration.

"For violence against an 11-year old an the sentence would not normally be suspended," wrote Judge Jørgen Mønsted in the final opinion. But it was a mitigating circumstance that Ahmed Akkari believed that the boy had pulled his sister’s scarf though he had already been warned not to do so a year before.

And since Ahmed Akkari had no prior record, "it is not absolutely necessary to carry out the sentence," opined the Judge and made the 40 days of incarceration into a suspended sentence.

This touch-and-go decision suspending his sentence made it possible for Ahmed Akkari to become a naturalised citizen last year.

Ahmed Akkari was born in 1978 i Lebanon and entered Denmark when he was 13. Therefore he was eligible to be a Danish Citizen. But the Danish naturalisation laws have a waiting period of 4 years from a suspended sentence before a foreigner can become a Danish citizen. And since the sentence was handed down in March of 2001, the earliest time Ahmed Akkari could achieve citizenship was in the spring of 2005. He was granted citizenship on the 14th of June 2005.

A full sentence would have meant that he would have had to wait till 2009 to achieve citizenship

A two year younger sister - not the one from this incident - achieved citizenship in April of 2002. She has no criminal record.