New South Wales police are yet to speak to a second nurse involved in a viral video, despite his colleague being charged for allegedly threatened to kill Israeli patients.
Sarah Abu Lebdeh, who worked at Bankstown-Lidcombe hospital in Sydney’s southwest, was charged with three offences including threatening violence, using a carriage service to threaten to kill and using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend.
In an edited video posted by the Israeli influencer Max Veifer, the 26-year-old nurse appears alongside her colleague Ahmed Rashid Nadir, both allegedly claiming they won’t treat Israelis and boasting of sending them to hell.
Strike Force Pearl investigators arrested and charged Abu Lebdeh late on Tuesday but no charges have been laid against Ahmed Rashid Nadir.
The NSW police commissioner, Karen Webb, confirmed the male nurse was still under investigation, but police were yet to speak to him.
Nadir was taken to hospital for assessment earlier in February after paramedics were called to his Bankstown home, in Sydney’s west, following a “concern for welfare” report.
The investigation had not been straightforward due to the “jurisdictional challenges” involved due to Veifer’s location, Webb said.
In the back and forth with Veifer, a former soldier who reveals in the video he served with the Israeli Defence Forces.
“One day, your time will come and you will die the most horrible death,” Abu Lebdeh says on the video.
Speaking on ABC radio, Webb said that “given the nature of this … – where we had two people here in NSW and the recording made overseas – it’s been a complex investigation. We’re talking across borders.”
There was no evidence patients at the hospital had actually been harmed, but the courts were best placed to decide the intent of the nurses’ comments, Ms Webb said.
Nadir previously told reporters the incident was a “big mistake”, describing the comments as a joke gone wrong and apologising for any offence caused.
Reaction was swift to the video with widespread condemnation, including from the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and the NSW premier, Chris Minns.
Australia’s health practitioner watchdog has barred both nurses from working in the profession nationwide “in any context”.
The pair have also had their registrations suspended by the NSW Nursing and Midwifery Council.
The former nurse was granted conditional bail and is due to appear in court in March.
