Video in Death of Palestinian Seems to Rebut Israeli Military - The New York Times
JERUSALEM — An Israeli human rights group on Monday challenged the military’s account of an episode in which a soldier shot and killed a Palestinian youth who had hurled a rock at the soldier’s vehicle, saying that video and witnesses’ accounts contradicted the army’s version of the incident.
The rights group B’Tselem, which made the assertions, also questioned Israel’s ability to impartially investigate allegations that its armed forces had acted illegally.
Immediately after the shooting on July 3, a military spokeswoman said that Israeli soldiers first fired into the air to warn the stone throwers to stop, and that the episode was under investigation. The military has since said it could not comment more on the matter.
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But the video and the witnesses’ accounts appear to indicate that the soldiers ran after the youth, Muhammad Hani al-Kasba, after he threw a rock at their vehicle and that they were not in apparent danger while pursuing him, B’Tselem said. In addition, Mr. Kasba, 17, was shot in the back and the side of his face, suggesting that he was shot while fleeing the soldiers, said Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B’Tselem.
The episode has loomed large since the Palestinians joined the International Criminal Court. The court will have to decide whether Israel can fairly investigate itself before it opens its own criminal investigation into Israel’s actions during the war in Gaza last summer, as well as investigating suspected violations in the West Bank, as the Palestinians have requested. Fatou Bensouda, the court’s chief prosecutor, began a preliminary investigation on that question in January.
The shooting of Mr. Kasba has received unusual attention because Israeli news media outlets have reported that the officer who shot him, Col. Yisrael Shomer, leads a brigade that oversees a central district in the West Bank.
“It sends a message to all other soldiers in the region: ‘This is how one should behave,’ ” Ms. Michaeli said.
The Israeli news media reported that Colonel Shomer had been questioned on Sunday.
Video from a security camera provided by Mr. Kasba’s family to B’Tselem shows the teenager hurling a rock at a vehicle’s window and then running away. Three soldiers then leave the vehicle, with two of them pursuing Mr. Kasba and the third soldier standing near the vehicle. Seconds later, they return to the vehicle and drive away.
The video, along with accounts by Palestinian witnesses and photographs of Mr. Kasba’s body that were provided to B’Tselem, indicate that he was not risking the soldiers’ lives when he was shot and killed, Ms. Michaeli said. In a video distributed on social media networks that purports to show Mr. Kasba after he was shot, he is seen lying on the ground with blood pooling around his face, neck and upper shoulders, as people yell for medical help.
Ms. Michaeli said that he had been shot twice in the upper back and once on the side of his face, which she said indicated that he had been running away when he was shot. The witnesses’ statements and the video also suggested, she said, that the soldiers left Mr. Kasba without offering any medical treatment. He was taken to a hospital in the nearby city of Ramallah, where he was pronounced dead.
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