Israel Police welcomes closing of case against officers in Umm al-Hiran shooting

The Israel Police welcomes the decision by Israel’s top prosecutor, State Attorney Shai Nitzan, to close the case against police officers who opened fire on a Bedouin Israeli man in January 2017 in an incident that led to his death and that of a policeman at the scene.

“The Israel Police welcomes the decision made by the State Attorney’s Office that concluded the officers of the Israel Police acted lawfully, and that no suspicion of criminality arose in the investigation,” a police statement says.

“The findings of the PIID investigation accord entirely with the findings of the preliminary inquiry carried out in the field by the Israel Police” at the time of the incident,” the statement adds.

The clearing of the officers in the case will allow the reopening of the “investigation in its intelligence aspects” and the “operational debriefing necessary to glean lessons from the event, as should happen at the conclusion of any complex operational incident.”