Israeli soldier who shot wounded Palestinian charged with manslaughter

An Israeli soldier who shot dead a severely wounded Palestinian assailant in the West Bank city of Hebron last week will be prosecuted for manslaughter and not murder.

The Palestinian, 21-year-old Abed al-Fatah al-Sharif, had already been shot and incapacitated during a stabbing attack on an Israeli soldier when the accused, who has not been formally identified, arrived at the scene. The soldier is seen invideo footage of the incident cocking his weapon and shooting Sharif in the head.

At a court hearing on Thursday, Lt Col Edoram Rigler said military prosecutors were reducing the expected charge from murder to manslaughter, adding the prosecution felt confident it would secure a conviction.

The soldier and his legal team have argued in hearings this week that he acted in self defence, fearing Sharif was wearing a suicide bomb – a claim that was challenged by the prosecution during its presentation. Rigler told the court that the prosecution would argue there was no operational need for the soldier to shoot Sharif.

Other soldiers present at the scene of the Hebron shooting told the hearing that the soldier had stated before the incident that “the terrorist was alive and he deserved to die”. The decision on charges comes despite the intervention of Christof Heyns, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, who said of the Hebron shooting footage that “the images shown carry all the signs of a clear case of an extrajudicial execution”.

“Whatever legal regime one applies to the case, shooting someone who is no longer a threat is murder,” he added.

More than half of respondents to a poll carried out by an Israeli TV station earlier this week said they supported the soldier. Controversy over the army’s investigation of the soldier has prompted bitter exchanges between Israeli ministers in the government of Binyamin Netanyahu and prompted a number of demonstrations backing the soldier.

Prior to last week’s incident, a group of 11 Democratic congressmen had written to the US secretary of state, John Kerry, asking him to investigate the alleged involvement of the Israel Defence Forces and police in extrajudicial killings of Palestinians.