An Israeli court late on Thursday ordered the release of Nour Tamimi who was filmed along with her 16-year-old cousin Ahed slapping Israeli soldiers outside the family’s home in the West Bank village of al-Nabi Saleh last month.
The family’s lawyer said Nour was released on a bail of up to 5000 shekels following a two-week detention.
Sometime earlier the court turned down appeals to release Nour and requested that the 21-year-old remain behind bars until the end of proceedings against her.
On Sunday Nour was charged with aggravated assault of a soldier and preventing soldiers from carrying out their duties.
The indictment against Nour’s cousin Ahed whose photos have been widely shared on social media cited a total of 12 charges.
Footage from last month’s confrontation in Nabi Saleh shows Ahed and Nour approaching two heavily-armed Israeli soldiers then shoving kicking and slapping them while filming on their cellphones.
In Ahed’s version of the incident shared in front of the court during a hearing last month she said that the same soldiers featured in the video had shot her cousin in the head with a rubber bullet an hour prior to the filmed encounter. “Then I saw the same soldiers who hit my cousin this time in front of my house. I could not keep quiet and I responded as I did” the 16-year-old testified.
Photos of Ahed’s cousin Muhammad Tamimi have been widely shared on social media showing the young boy’s face badly bruised and scarred.
