Top prosecutor closes case into deadly Umm al-Hiran police shooting

The State Attorney’s Office on Tuesday closes a revised investigation into the deadly car-ramming incident in Umm al-Hiran last year, saying it could not determine whether the Bedouin man who ran over and killed a police officer and was subsequently killed by other officers had done so deliberately.

The investigation, led by State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan, determined that officers who fatally shot Yaqoub Mousa Abu Al-Qia’an during a January 2017 demolition of Al-Qia’an’s Negev village of Umm al-Hiran were not suspected of a criminal offense, and acted legally when they opened fire.

“After reviewing the materials and findings by the Police Internal Investigations Department, the investigation has ended with the determination that there is no suspicion of criminal offenses committed by the police officers involved in the incident,” Nitzan says in his decision.

He says the Justice Ministry was falling in line with the Shin Bet, who were unable to definitively say whether the ramming was a terror attack and declined to investigate the incident further.

Immediately after the January 2017 incident, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan asserted that Al-Qia’an was an IS-inspired terrorist who was shot at because he accelerated his vehicle toward a group of police officers, killing one.

But video footage that emerged in the hours after the incident showed the officers opened fire before Abu Al-Qia’an sped up, and that his car’s lights were on, contrary to police assertions. A Channel 10 report at the time said Abu Al-Qia’an’s autopsy further revealed that a police bullet hit him in the right knee, shattering it, which may have caused him to inadvertently hit the gas pedal instead of stopping the car.