On Tuesday, 3 December 2002, two days before the ‘Eid el-Fitr holiday, at around 6:00 PM, four soldiers went to Jabel Johar street in the H2 Area of Hebron, which is the area under Israeli control. Five men were in the barbershop on the street at the time: Bassem Maswadeh, 24, the owner of the barbershop, Wa’ il Abu Rumeileh, 19, a barber, and three customers – Muhammad Jibril a-Rajbi, 22, Bilal Muhammad Daud a-Rajbi, 21, and Shaher Sharif al-‘Ajaluni. Based on testimonies given to B’ Tselem, the subsequent events were as follows:

People in the street shouted that soldiers were coming into the area. Maswadeh and Abu Rumeileh closed the barbershop’ s iron door. A few seconds later, soldiers started banging on the door. When nobody opened it, the soldiers ordered two Palestinian bystanders, Bilal Abu Queidar and Nawaf al-‘Ajaluni, to call out to the people in the barbershop to open up, and threatened to fire into the shop. After about twenty minutes, Maswadeh opened the door.

One soldier danced into the shop and three more soldiers followed him inside. The soldiers demanded that the five Palestinians take off their jackets and hand over their ID cards. The soldiers searched them, punching them in the stomach in the process. Then the soldiers ordered the five Palestinians to sit on the couch.

One of the soldiers asked who the owner of the shop was. Maswadeh said that he was the owner. The soldier ordered him to sit in one of the barber’ s chairs and began to cut Maswadeh’ s hair with an electric razor. In the meantime, two of the soldiers ordered al-‘Ajaluni to go outside with them, where they beat him. Maswadeh asked the soldier what he was doing, and the soldier slapped him and told him to shut up. He put the razor to his hair forcefully and ignored Maswadeh’ s request that he stop. While the soldier was still cutting Maswadeh’ s hair, the other soldiers ordered a-Rajbi to go outside, where they searched and beat him as well.