"But investigations by both the Justice Ministry
department that investigates allegations of police misconduct and the
Shin Bet security service concluded that it was not."
DA skulle man tro det var enkelt for de etterlatte å få et greit oppgjør.
Men det motsetter Israel seg:
Skudeneshavn 30. august 2022
Jan Marton Jensen
Kilde:
HELE artikkelen i Haaretz 30. august 2022:
Israel Refuses Mediation in Suit Over Man Killed by Policeman During Eviction of Bedouin Village
Resident of unrecognized Bedouin village shot after now-debunked claim he carried out car-ramming attack, killing one Israeli police officer
Israel has refused mediation in a damages lawsuit filed by the family of Yakub Abu al-Kiyan, who was shot to death by police during the eviction of residents of his hometown of Umm al-Hiran in 2017.
The decision to eschew mediation was made by senior officials in the police and prosecution, including State Prosecutor Amit Aisman and Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai. The prosecution said its decision was based on the conclusion of Aisman’s predecessor, Shai Nitzan, that it’s “impossible to determine” with the requisite certainty that Abu al-Kiyan wasn’t killed while committing a car-ramming attack against police officers, as police had claimed, and that “regardless of whether the answer to this question is affirmative or negative, it’s clear the policemen on the scene acted out of a feeling of being in danger.”
Abu al-Kiyan was killed after he fatally ran over a policeman, Erez Levy, in what then-Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich claimed was a deliberate terror attack. But investigations by both the Justice Ministry department that investigates allegations of police misconduct and the Shin Bet security service concluded that it was not. The Justice Ministry said that Abu al-Kiyan hit Levy after being shot by police and losing control of his car, or alternatively while trying to escape a hail of police bullets.
Despite this, Nitzan chose not to investigate or to prosecute the police officers who shot Abu al-Kiyan, even though it was determined during the investigation that Abu al-Kiyan’s car had been traveling at only 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) per hour when police first shot him and found no evidence supporting the claim that this was a terror attack.
Wrongful death and slander
In August 2020, Abu al-Kiyan’s family sued the state in the Tel Aviv District Court, seeking 17 million shekels ($5.1 million) in damages for both wrongful death and slander. The latter was due to Alsheich’s claim that Abu al-Kiyan was a terrorist.
The state countered that police did nothing wrong, even though the investigation concluded that there was no terror attack and the shooting was an operational error. “The policemen’s action was reasonable under the circumstances, and the officers acted in accordance with the rules of engagement,” its defense brief said.
The prosecution also refused to give the family documents written by officials of the Justice Ministry investigation department explaining their conclusion that there was no terror attack, on the grounds that they are classified, internal documents.
In addition, the prosecution said Abu al-Kiyan bled to death because medics on the scene didn’t know he had been injured, although this, too, contradicts the investigation’s findings. Finally, it said that even if the medics had known, they couldn’t have treated him until a sapper made sure he wasn’t wired with explosives.
In its first hearing on the lawsuit, early this year, the court urged the state and the family to reach an out-of-court settlement through mediation. Lawyers for both sides agreed on a former judge to serve as mediator, but the prosecution recently changed its mind, saying it had concluded that “the case isn’t ripe for mediation.”
It also asked the court not to allow the investigators or senior officials from the department that conducted the investigation to be summoned as witnesses, because they weren’t on the scene during the eviction of the unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev. Summoning them is merely “an attempt to turn the hearing into a public stage,” it charged.
Case closed
The Justice Ministry investigators concluded that the officer who fired the fatal bullet should be investigated on suspicion of negligent homicide, but Nitzan ordered the case closed without any of the policemen involved being questioned. Last year, the High Court of Justice rejected the family’s request that the investigation against the policemen be reopened. A panel headed by Justice Isaac Amit said Nitzan’s decision wasn’t anomalous enough to justify judicial intervention, even though the incident “wasn’t the police’s finest hour, to say the least.”
“The events in Umm al-Hiran didn’t end in January 2017,” said the family’s lawyer, Moshe Karif. “They have continued since then and confronted the entire Israeli justice system, including the police and prosecution, with a challenge whose essence is protecting the civil rights of all of us. I hope the court will enable a hearing on the issue of Yakub’s tragic death and the violation of his constitutional rights, first and foremost the rights to life, dignity and a good name even after death.”
The prosecution said that “contrary to what is being claimed, no decision in principle has been made against going to mediation,” but “the state thinks that at this stage, conditions aren’t ripe for mediation.” It also said it considers the views of Justice Ministry investigators who weren’t present at the scene of the incident “irrelevant to this kind of suit, which deals mainly with clarifying the facts about events as they happened and as the policemen experienced them in real time.”
Finally, it noted that Nitzan, the former state prosecutor, had overruled the head of the department that investigated the case by concluding it wasn’t possible to be certain the incident wasn’t a terror attack. The High Court also concluded that “there’s an evidentiary vacuum about the reasons for the deceased’s conduct, and that whether the answer to this question is affirmative or negative, it’s clear the policemen on the scene acted out of a feeling of being in danger.”
Police merely noted that the state is entitled to have the suit heard in court.
