Family appeals to court to get back body of Bedouin car-rammer

Lawyers for a Bedouin Arab man killed during clashes in southern Israel announced Friday they had filed a petition calling for his body to be returned with out conditions.

The police said Friday that they will only return the body of 47-year-old Yaqoub Mousa Abu Al-Qia’an on condition that he have a small, private funeral at night, a condition normally imposed for funerals for terrorists.

“They want to give the body back only at night, and also to have only a limited number of people at the funeral — 40-50 people only,” Attorney Nadeem Shehadeh from the Adalah NGO told AFP.

They also demanded the funeral not take place in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, where he came from, but in the nearby town of Hura, Shehadeh said.

Police, as well as Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, insist Al-Qia’an is a terrorist who deliberately rammed his car into police officers pre-dawn Wednesday, killing one of them. They have accused Al-Qia’an of jihadist sympathies and called the attack “terrorism” and “murder.”

Abu Al-Qua’an, 47, a schoolteacher, drove his car into a group of police officers who were supervising court-ordered home demolitions in the unrecognized Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, killing 1st Sgt. Erez Levi, 34.

The family and witnesses insist he was driving his car slowly before he was shot.

The vehicle then crashed into the officers, they say.

Footage from the scene was indecisive.

The incident has raised widespread anger among Israel’s Arab community, who have held a series of protests and strikes.

The Beersheba District Court accepted an appeal by police to extend by four days the remand of two men accused of attacking police during demonstrations surrounding the home demolitions.

The judge criticized the city’s Magistrate’s Court which wanted to release the suspects to house arrest in order to calm tensions in the village.

The police internal affairs division has launched an investigation into the fatal Wednesday incident.