Remember Kayvan Sabeghi, the 32-year-old Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran and Occupy Oakland protester who was hospitalized for a lacerated spleen after being beaten by baton-wielding Oakland cops? A witness has come forward with video footage of Sabeghi's police encounter, and it's pretty awful.

Neil Rivas, who shot the video in the early morning hours of November 3, told The Guardian that Sabeghi had been "telling [police] he was a war vet, a resident of Oakland, a business owner" before a riot-gear cop began beating the crap out of him with a truncheon. "I couldn't help but start yelling out for them to stop," Rivas says. "[Sabeghi] was not fighting back; he was moving away from the officer. It did not feel good." The police tried to shove him out of the way to prevent him from shooting, he adds: "I had several guns pointed my way. I remember specifically one officer right in front of me having his gun pointed point blank at me." Sabeghi had to undergo surgery as a result of the beating; the Oakland police are now investigating.

Sabeghi, you might recall, isn't the only vet to have been seriously injured during Occupy Oakland protests: a few days before his spleen-splitting encounter with cops, fellow Iraq vet Scott Olsen got hit on the head with a projectile gas canister and suffered a serious brain injury. Olsen recently gave his first public statement since being injured but will require lots of rehab to get back to 100 percent.

[Guardian, via New York Times]