Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Ex-Fatah fighter in battle for justice after daughter killed by Israeli police

Ex-Fatah fighter in battle for justice after daughter killed by Israeli
police 
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem 
Published: 23 August 2007 
Bassam Aramin describes how his wife Salwa dissolved into tears after they
learnt the official investigation into their 10-year-old daughter's death
had been closed without any prosecution or explanation of how it happened.
"She felt that they had killed her another time," he said. 
Now Palestinian peace campaigner Mr Aramin who, like his wife, is
convinced their daughter Abir was killed by a rubber bullet fired by
Israeli border police, is to fight through the Israeli courts to have the
investigation reopened.
Mr Aramin's daughter was killed as she walked down a busy street in Anata,
on the West Bank, last January. Witnesses said the officers in a Jeep were
firing as she fell.
Part of what makes the case unusual stems from the life story of Mr
Aramin, a former Fatah militant who - long before his daughter's death -
renounced violence and now devotes his spare time to fostering peaceful
dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis. He has had the backing of a
group of Israeli ex-soldier friends in the unique organisation, Combatants
for Peace.
Seven of the ex-soldiers were arrested at a demonstration against the
decision to close the prosecution file outside the Ministry of Justice
this month. The mainly Israeli protesters brandished banners saying in
Hebrew, "Bring the murderers of Abir to justice" and "There is no immunity
for killers in uniform".
Also unusual is the faith of Mr Aramin, as a Palestinian, that the
perpetrator of Abir's death will be identified. He said he was "angry but
not surprised" that the file was closed; few of more than 800 deaths of
Palestinian children in conflict since 2000 have even been investigated.
Abir was with her sister and two friends after buying chocolate at a
grocery shop having just finished a maths exam. One of the friends,
12-year-old Abrar Abu Qweida said an Israeli Jeep passed them in the
opposite direction and she noticed a gun protruding from the rear.
Moments later, she said, she heard a loud bang and like Abir's sister
Arin, 11, hunched her shoulders in an instinctive reaction. She said that
Abir fell forward. A boy who helped to take Abir into her nearby school
handed the Israeli legal rights agency Yesh Din a rubber bullet he said he
found under her body.
Because the prosecution has not yet released the report of its
investigation to Mr Aramin's Israeli lawyer, Michael Sfard, it is not yet
clear why it was closed. But the policemen are understood to have
maintained their Jeep was in a position from which it was impossible to
have shot Abir.
There have been clashes between school students and police, though
residents have said there was no reason for the police to come to Anata
that day.
But Mr Aramin was at a meeting between representatives of the local school
and Nissim Edri, a Border Police commander for outer Jerusalem on 20 March
in which he says Mr Edri said, "the girl who died didn't die from the fire
of one of our forces in the envelope of Jerusalem. It was someone from
another area because they didn't understand the mentality and the
agreements we have with the representatives of the school". Mr Edri also
reportedly added that outside forces would not come to Anata again.
While not legally conclusive, the remarks strongly suggest an assumption
among at least some senior officers that she had been shot by border
policemen.
Mr Aramin also says he had a heated conversation with the driver of the
Jeep at the third reconstruction of the scene by police investigators. He
says: "I said, 'Why did you kill a 10-year-old?'. He said, 'There was a
demonstration'. I said there was no demonstration. He said, 'Why would we
shoot if there was no demonstration'. So they were admitting they fired."
At the autopsy, the state pathologist said Abir could have been killed by
a stone as well as a rubber bullet. A pathologist hired by the family said
a stone was theoretically possible, but a rubber bullet was more likely.
Abrar Abu Qweida said in January stones had been thrown by boys from the
bottom of the hill, towards which the girls was facing. But Abir's fatal
wound was in the back of her head.
Avichai Sharon, one of the Israelis arrested in this month's demo, said
closure of the case follows a near-uniform pattern in cases with
Palestinian victims, and he is adamant that if the case was a simple
criminal one a prosecution would have followed.
Even without pathological evidence, he says: "You have the testimonies of
seven witnesses, you have a bullet found at the scene. If this had been a
Jewish girl going home from school in a Jerusalem suburb would the
investigation have looked the same?."
He contrasts the much more publicised case of Tair Rhada, 13-year-old
Jewish girl murdered in the Golan heights at about the same time. Under
pressure of public opinion and despite heavily contested evidence, police
swiftly prosecuted. "This is an example of how there is a difference
between blood and blood."
Mr Aramin, who began to think about the meaning of the Holocaust after
seeing Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, says he is more determined
than ever to keep up dialogue with Israelis, including the remarkable
Israeli-Palestinian bereaved families group which he has joined since
Abir's death. The group includes the Jewish parents of suicide bombing
victims. "We have to do all we can to protect the children in this
conflict," he says.
Mr Sfard will decide on what grounds to appeal when he gets the
investigators' file, probably next week. Another Palestinian witness, a
former employee of the Israeli police who drove past the incident as Abir
fell, came forward after seeing Mrs Aramin in tears on television. His
evidence is thought to corroborate other Palestinian testimonies.
Mr Aramin is adamant that he wants justice and not revenge, and is
determined to go all the way to Israeli Supreme Court. "I have to prove my
daughter was killed," he says quietly. "That is my problem." 
-- 
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sono in lacrime..

 sono in lacrime..
che verme di letame che sei.
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