Another Whitewash: No Trial for Israeli Border Police Officers Suspected of Killing 10-Year-Old Palestinian Girl

The Israeli military's token investigation into
the killing of a 10-year-old Palestinian girl became yet another
whitewash today, as the Jerusalem District Prosecutor's Office ruled
not to indict Israeli Border Police officers suspected of killing Abir
Aramin in the Palestinian village of Anata near Jerusalem in January
2007.

Jerusalem prosecutors decided to close the investigation due to what
they said was a lack of evidence on the exact nature of Abir's death.

The ruling was based on findings of an investigation conducted by the
'Judea and Samaria' police department (Israel's police authority in
the West Bank), whose pathologists claimed it was impossible to
determine exactly what the cause of Abir's death was.

Yet eyewitness accounts indicated that Abir was hit in the head whilst
on her way home from school by a stun grenade thrown by Israeli border
police officers at a group of Palestinian children.  She died two days
later on 20 January 2007.

This is just the latest in a series of whitewashes over the Israeli
military's killing of Palestinian civilians, a common practice within
the Israeli military whose soldiers "act within an institutionalised
culture of impunity," said Palestinian National Initiative leader Dr.
Mustafa Barghouthi MP today.

He cited the example of the Israeli army's investigation into the
killing of 17-year-old Bushra Bargish who was shot in cold blood
during an Israeli military raid in Jenin on 21 April 2007. Bushra was
shot in the forehead by an Israeli sniper while in her bedroom as she
was preparing for an exam. Contradicting all eyewitness accounts, the
Israeli military's investigation justified her killing by saying that
shots were fired at the soldiers from a window in the same building in
which Bushra lived, and that she was hit in the ensuring 'exchange of
fire'.

Abir and Bushra's deaths clearly reveal that the Israeli military can
kill Palestinian children with immunity, exposing "the true face of
Israel's inhuman occupation", concluded Dr. Barghouthi.