[News] Ahmed Erekat: New evidence refutes the Israeli version of his killing

[#Hassan.]

The Human Rights Watch Unit of the University of London completed an investigation that lasted for 8 months into the killing of Palestinian Ahmed Erekat last June by the Israeli army at a military checkpoint known as the "Container" in the south of the West Bank.

The investigation indicated that the accident was accidental, and Erekat had no intention of deliberately colliding with the Israeli soldiers, which refutes the Israeli story, which announced at the time that the young man was killed for carrying out a car-ramming operation that resulted in the injury of a female soldier with minor injuries.

The investigation unit relied on advanced techniques to reconstruct the scene and use what was photographed by passers-by with their mobile phones and video clips published by the Israeli army from the surveillance cameras deployed at the military checkpoint.

British accidents expert Jeremy J. Power focused on 4 points to prove the nature of the accident, including: the speed of the car in which Ahmed Erekat was traveling, the Israeli army’s use of what he described as lethal force and neglecting to provide urgent medical assistance to him after he was shot and fell to the ground.

I conducted an interview with one of the researchers in the unit and she gave me an explanation of the results of the investigation carried out by the unit, where she said: “We relied on what we have video clips that were published immediately after the accident, and through our monitoring of the movement of the car, we noticed that it did not accelerate significantly and collided with the Israeli soldier at a low speed. This is not the behavior of a driver who intends to cause severe damage to his target, in addition to firing 6 bullets in just two seconds at Ahmed. The first two bullets hit him in the chest area and the rest of the bullets hit separate parts of his body before falling into the ground.

The family of Ahmed Erekat, along with the Palestinian Al-Haq Foundation for Human Rights, provided assistance and the information it had regarding the course of the investigation, hoping to speed up the release of the body of Ahmed, who had been detained since the date of the accident.

I went to the family's home in the town of Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem, in which the scene on the day of the accident turned from joy to relief. The garden of the house, which was prepared to receive visitors congratulating the wedding of Ahmed's sister, received crowds of mourners for his loss.

In the same garden, I sat with the father, Mustafa Erekat, who told me: “I am happy with the results of the recent investigation, and I do not ask for much. I just want to receive my son’s body for his riches. We know that he was killed in cold blood and with the aim of training the Israeli army soldiers, and we will continue to demand the release of his body.”

He pointed out that the family submitted a petition to the Israeli court after the killing of his son Ahmed to demand receipt of his body, but the court sessions were postponed for several times.

 Deliberate run over'
The Israeli army confirmed the conduct of lengthy investigations into what it considered a car-ramming operation carried out by Palestinian Ahmed Erekat last June against Israeli soldiers at a military checkpoint in the southern West Bank.

The army told the BBC: "The run-over operation was deliberate and posed a threat to the lives of our soldiers who shot and killed Ahmed. The detention of his body continues in coordination with the political level and the Israeli Supreme Court, which is looking into the legality of the file."

The army indicated that there is a phenomenon of run-over operations that kill and injure many Israelis in various areas of the West Bank.

Human rights demands
The Palestinian Campaign for Body Recovery announced the existence of about 72 bodies of Palestinians who were killed in various incidents that have been detained by the Israeli authorities since 2015. The campaign, together with local and international human rights organizations, calls for an urgent international and legal intervention to end the policy of detaining the bodies.

The director of programs at the Palestinian Al-Haq Foundation, Tahsin Alyan, explained: “The Israeli authorities implemented in October 2015 the policy of detaining the bodies, and since then Israel has been holding more than 72 Palestinian bodies in its refrigerators, which constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law and collective punishment of the families of Palestinians whose bodies are detained. I have Israel. "

Palestinian figures indicate that there are more than 326 Palestinian bodies detained since the 1960s, most of them in the cemeteries called Israeli Numbers Cemeteries, and the Palestinian campaign to retrieve the bodies calls for the recovery of the bodies through more than 196 lawsuits filed in Israeli courts.