Video showed that, as the men prayed, police officers descended on the group, grabbing those at the edge of the prayer group and dragging them along the ground.<\/p>\n
Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n The men in prayer did not respond and continued to pray. Other protesters yelled at police \u201cLeave them\u201d and \u201cThey\u2019re fucking praying\u201d.<\/p>\n Charkawi said police had used violence at an otherwise peaceful protest.<\/p>\n \u201c[Police were] so unhinged, so aggressive and so violent and had zero regard for anyone and anything in their way, even peaceful worshippers who were not in anyone\u2019s way.\u201d<\/p>\n Charkawi said he and his fellow worshippers were about 15 minutes behind schedule to hold sunset prayer towards the end of the demonstration.<\/p>\n He said as he prayed, \u201cwe could obviously hear a big ruckus behind us. And I saw people \u2026 being flung off on my right, flung off on my left.\u201d<\/p>\n In the footage, Charkawi can be seen continuing to kneel in prayer.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re in prayer, you\u2019re not allowed to break it for any reason. There\u2019s got to be a catastrophe, or some type of emergency that is happening, for us to do that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As he was pulled by police, he said he felt like his shoulder was nearly ripped out of its socket.<\/p>\n \u201cWe weren\u2019t disobeying any police commands. We were simply making our prayers and we had our back turned,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat an unacceptable thing that they have done.\u201d<\/p>\n The NSW Greens MLC Abigail Boyd said she was punched in the head and shoulder by police officers, and then saw Muslim men who were on their knees praying being dragged away by police.<\/p>\n \u201c[Police] then went in and grabbed those who were praying \u2013 you can\u2019t get anything more peaceful than prayer \u2013 picking them up and just throwing them on the ground again.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople were just treated so incredibly poorly. That is not social cohesion. This was a peaceful protest, standing for people who were protesting a genocide on the other side of the world, but had made it explicit that we were inclusive of Jewish people. We are against antisemitism.\u201d<\/p>\n Muslim groups urge police to apologise<\/p>\n At least 38 Muslim and legal organisations across Australia have demanded the resignation of the NSW police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, with the group saying his \u201cleadership bears responsibility for a policing culture in which such conduct was permitted to occur\u201d. Lanyon has spent nearly 40 years in the NSW police force and has been commissioner for five months.<\/p>\n The group said the NSW premier, Chris Minns, should apologise for the police \u201cabuse of power\u201d.<\/p>\n The coalition of Muslim organisations said the use of force against worshippers during a lawful and peaceful protest was unacceptable.<\/p>\n \u201cPolice officers knowingly intervened in a moment of religious observance, forcibly interrupted prayer and used physical force against individuals who posed no threat to public safety. Some worshippers were dragged away and thrown to the ground,\u201d the group said in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was an abuse of power and a serious failure of judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n The group argued no other faith community would be expected to accept sacred practices being forcibly disrupted by police.<\/p>\n \u201cMuslims should not be held to a different standard, nor should our religious expression be treated as a problem to be managed or suppressed,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n The group called for an independent inquiry into the incident, and accountability \u2013 including potentially criminal charges \u2013 for individual officers found to have acted unlawfully.<\/p>\n The Australian National Imams Council said it was outraged by the police\u2019s \u201cheavy-handed\u201d and unprovoked physicality.<\/p>\n \u201cPolice are entrusted to protect the community, uphold public safety and de-escalate tensions, not to interfere with religious worship or inflame an already sensitive situation.\u201d<\/p>\n Lanyon defended his officers\u2019 actions, saying they showed \u201cremarkable restraint\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cSpeakers were inciting the crowd to march. We had made it clear throughout the week [that a] march through the CBD was not acceptable.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted a respectful and responsible protest. That\u2019s not what we got last night. Our police took action to disperse that protest.\u201d<\/p>\n Minns said while he understood there had been criticisms of the police, officers needed to keep protesters separated from more than 7,000 people who were at an event with Herzog at Darling Harbour, mourning the Bondi beach attacks.<\/p>\n Police \u201cwere caught in an impossible situation,\u201d the premier said<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThey did their job by keeping those groups separate, and we want to thank them for their service to the people of NSW.\u201d<\/p>\n Minns insisted police had a \u201cstrong and cooperative relationship\u201d with Sydney\u2019s Muslim community.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to make it clear there is no suggestion, under any circumstances, that police would have wanted to prevent people praying or get in the way of people lawfully exercising their religion.<\/p>\n \u201cBut context is important here, and the circumstances facing NSW police was incredibly difficult. It was, in effect, in the middle of a riot. Police have to make critical early decisions in those circumstances. It wasn\u2019t designed to pick on or target a particular community.\u201d<\/p>\n The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, raised the issue of police action against praying protesters in parliament, saying he would \u201callow police to do their job\u201d in investigating. He said many in Australia \u201cwill want to know all of the circumstances around that\u201d.<\/p>\n Charkawi, a support officer at Granville Boys high school<\/a>, was last year ordered to work from home after posting a video in response to the Bankstown hospital nurses<\/a> footage, in which he criticised \u201cselective outrage\u201d.<\/p>\n In his video, Charkawi said the nurses\u2019 comments were \u201cnever meant to be literal or intended to be a threat to patient care\u201d and criticised people who had spoken out about them but remained silent on Israel\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New South Wales police who grabbed men kneeling in prayer during a protest in Sydney against Israeli president…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-283346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Pepper](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/8192.jpg\")
Pepper spray and questionable police tactics: how a Sydney protest ended in chaos \u2013 video<\/p>\n