Man, 36, to be charged for assaulting French nun in Jerusalem

Police ask court to extend custody of Yona Schreiber, suspected in last week’s attack, until end of legal proceedings

Police on Sunday named Yona Schreiber, 36, as the man suspected of assaulting a French nun in Jerusalem last week, as prosecutors prepared to charge him over the attack.

The Israel Police said that it submitted a prosecutor’s statement to the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court on Sunday, and requested to extend Schreiber’s remand until charges are filed and legal proceedings against him are completed.

He was arrested on Tuesday, the day of the attack.

Footage of the assault released by police last week showed the suspect, who is wearing “tzitzit,” a Jewish ritual men’s undergarment, running up from behind the nun and shoving her to the ground.

He is then seen walking away before returning to kick the woman while she is still lying on the ground.

The man then scuffles briefly with a passerby, who appears to attempt to intervene in the assault.

The assault occurred in front of the Cenacle, a building on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion considered holy to both Christians and Jews, the latter of whom regard it as the burial place of the biblical King David.

Footage shared by police showed bruises on the right side of the nun’s face.

Olivier Poquillon, the director of the French School of Biblical and Archaeological Research, said the nun was a researcher at the school. He called the attack an “act of sectarian violence” in a post on X last week.

Wadie Abunassar, the coordinator of the Holy Land Christian Forum, last week called attacks targeting Christians a growing phenomenon. He attributed the quick response to the attack on the nun to the fact that it was caught on video.

He said he felt “great anger on the system and great sadness because I feel that this will not end anytime soon.” One of the problems, he said, was the deterrence against such violence.

“Many times in such cases there are no arrests, and if there are arrests, sometimes after one or two days, (suspects) are released,” he added. “In some cases, the police do not recommend the prosecution to file charges or to indict them. And in some cases, when there is indictment, the indictment is mild.”

Tensions have flared in recent weeks between Christian communities in Israel and the government, with police briefly blocking top Catholic clergy from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre ahead of Easter due to restrictions on gatherings during the Iran war, and Israeli soldiers drawing widespread condemnation for bludgeoning a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon.

The Catholic clergy were eventually granted access to the church for an Easter ceremony, and two soldiers involved in vandalizing the statue were taken off combat duty and punished.

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, also took aim last year at the Israeli government for treating Christian organizations as “adversaries.”

The recent tensions follow years of attacks on Christians in the Old City by Orthodox Jews. An epidemic of spitting attacks, often by yeshiva students who subscribe to an extreme interpretation of the Bible’s injunction to “abhor” idol worshipers, spurred rabbinic rebuke in the past, but such incidents have persisted.

Lazar Berman and Agencies contributed to this report.