Kafr Kanna residents protest visit by Netanyahu, public security minister
Demonstrators in Arab town call Gilad Erdan a ‘liar’ for pronouncing a Bedouin teacher shot by police in January a terrorist
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on Google
Dozens of residents of the northern town of Kafr Kanna protested on Tuesday a visit by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan for the inauguration of a police station.
The prime minister and public security minister also attended the opening of a second police station on Tuesday in the northern Arab town of Jisr az-Zarqa, which went ahead without incident.
In Kafr Kanna, protesters shouted: “Erdan, you liar, you killed Abu al-Qia’an,” and “We will sacrifice our lives for the martyrs,” according to the Ynet news site.
Yaqoub Mousa Abu Al-Qia’an, 47, a teacher and father of 12, was shot and killed in January after his car careened into police officers who had come to demolish homes in his Negev Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran.
Shortly after the incident, which also resulted in the death of police 1st Sgt. Erez Levi, 34, from Yavneh, and before the conclusion of an investigation, Erdan and law enforcement asserted that Abu Al-Qia’an was a terrorist inspired by the Islamic State group.
It subsequently emerged that Al-Qia’an had already been shot by police and lost control of his vehicle when it plowed into Levi and another policeman.
Channel 10 reported in January that a police autopsy indicated that a bullet hit him in the right knee, smashing it. The bullet wound may have caused Abu Al-Qia’an to lose control of his car, the report said.
The initial findings from the Police Internal Investigations Department did not point at any evidence to support the claim that the incident in Umm al-Hiran was a terror attack, and also determined that police officers did not act according to protocol.
The six-month probe of the Justice Ministry’s Police Internal Investigations Department also concluded that Al-Qia’an was not a terrorist but found no indication that the officers who shot him had acted criminally.
Erdan subsequently admitted it was “possible” that he had been mistaken, and spoke of a “regrettable incident” in which “both a citizen and a police officer were killed”
In March, Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel publicly apologized for the “grievous mistakes that were made” in Umm al-Hiran.
The Times of Israel Community.