West Bank: Video shows ‘targeted killing’ of Palestinians by Israeli police | International

The night of Palestine is strewn with obscure incidents. In the wake of the epidemic that rocked the Holy Land from Ramadan to escalating war in Gaza, between April and May, news of the death of 25-year-old Ahmad Abdu was among three dozen Palestinians who then lost. life in violent actions in the West Bank. A security camera recording, released Wednesday by the Israeli NGO B’Tselem, now contradicts the police version – dead during arrest – and sheds light – the signs of a targeted assassination – on the darkness of these episodes.

B’Tselem’s video shows four agents from an undercover unit firing point blank at Abdu as he was about to start his vehicle, parked outside a relative’s house on a street in Um- a-Shayeret, a suburb of the Ramallah metropolitan area. , 20 kilometers north of Jerusalem. The events took place in the early morning hours of May 25, four days after the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, and hours after several Palestinians fired at soldiers in El Bireh, near Ramallah.

In the footage, recorded in the middle of the night and tens of meters away, silhouettes armed with rifles can be seen coming out of a vehicle that had hampered Ahmad Abdu and immediately opening fire on him. Witnesses consulted by the Palestinian news agency Wafa assured that he was mistaarvim, undercover agents of Palestinians, best known for the Israeli series Fauda (chaos, in Arabic) broadcast worldwide on Netflix.

Apparently seriously injured, the young Palestinian even opened a door to his car, according to the video, as officers surrounded him to drag him outside. Border guards then left the area, three minutes after the shooting began, and left him abandoned without providing first aid.

Several residents who came to help him told investigators from the human rights organization B’Tselem that he was still alive. Among them was nurse Wahib Mayadba. “We were all asleep at home when the shooting started. I heard at least three gunshots and could not leave until the officers around him left, ”said the Palestinian health worker, who assisted the injured and was barely able to take his pulse. noticeable, before calling an ambulance from the Palestinian Red Media Luna. “I didn’t dare move him for fear of causing him internal injuries; he bled from his shoulder, ”he recalls

Abdu was transferred 15 minutes later to the Palestinian health complex in Ramallah, where the body has already been admitted, according to its director, Ahmad al Bitawi, confirmed to local media. Abdu had bullet holes in his left chest and legs, and signs of abrasion after being dragged.

The Israeli border police (a militarized body), which also operates in the West Bank, limited itself to stressing in a statement that the young Palestinian “died during an arrest operation” and was considered “an accomplice of ‘a terrorist’ who he was wanted.

The events were described by the human rights organization B’Tselem as a “selective assassination”. The Israeli NGO argues that “shooting live ammunition at a person sitting in a car and who does not pose a threat to the police, without even attempting his formal arrest, is not a ‘detention operation’.

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Ahmad Abdu lived in Al Amari refugee camp in Ramallah and worked as a clerk at El Bireh town hall, but he had another job (in his girlfriend’s family bakery) because he was saving to pay for a house with him. their wedding this summer, his uncle, Ayman Abu Arab, to whose address the events took place, told B’Tselem. “He had come to help us with some work,” he said.

Abu Arab, who was jailed for 10 years in Israel, told the NGO that a Shin Bet (internal security) official called him shortly after the shooting to apologize “for the death of a man. innocent ”. “He admitted that he did not know what could have happened”, continues the account of the uncle of the victim, “and that one of my brothers was suspected of having participated in the shooting on the soldiers during of a demonstration at the main entrance to El Bireh. ” “He asked me to surrender to the security forces,” he explained, hinting thatthat his nephew Abdu may have been mistaken for a relative. The next day, several members of this Palestinian clan were arrested in a raid.

A 2016 video recording by a Palestinian collaborator of B’Tselem, showing Israeli soldier Elor Azaria shooting at an attacker who was lying seriously injured in Hebron (West Bank), led to a war of the councils in which the serviceman was sentenced for murder to 18 months in prison. Finally, the army chief reduced his sentence to 14 months.