Palestinian teen accused of attempting ‘suicide by soldier’ denies wanting to die

A Palestinian teenage girl who on Wednesday was shot by Israeli security guards at a West Bank checkpoint, in an apparent suicide attempt, said she had no intention of trying to commit a terror attack, rejecting reports she had told the guards that she was there to die.

Thirteen-year-old Bara’a Ramadan Owaisi from Qalqilya had approached guards at a checkpoint in the northern West Bank, ignoring calls to stop her advance before she was shot in the leg. She was taken in for treatment and an Israeli military court on Thursday freed her, saying there was no evidence that she had attempted any attack; nor had she been in possession of a weapon.

The Defense Ministry claimed, after an initial investigation, that the girl had told guards:”I came to die.”

In an interview with Channel 2 Thursday, Owaisi denied the claims, saying she approached the checkpoint because she wanted to see where her aunt had died last year while trying to carry out a stabbing attack.

Owaisi’s aunt, Rasha Owaisi, 23, was shot dead at the same checkpoint last November when she brandished a knife and approached the guards there. The aunt had left a suicide note for her family.

“She used to watch TV, and saw people dying and decided to carry out an attack,” Owaisi said of her aunt, adding that from the day she died, she had wanted to go see the exact location where she was shot.

“The more I approached [the checkpoint], the Jew[ish] guard spoke to me… in Hebrew, I did not understand what he was saying,” Owaisi said, denying that she had said she wanted to die.

“I never said such a thing. Those soldiers thought I had a knife but where would I get a knife from? I’m just a little girl,” she argued.

“Besides, I don’t understand such political things,” she told Channel 2.

A video of the incident shows Owaisi standing at the checkpoint while someone issues an order for her to stop. A man is heard shouting in the background: “Don’t shoot, no one shoot her.”

https://www.facebook.com/RamallahNewsOfficialPage/videos/1299576243387336

After several calls to stop, Owaisi was shot in the leg.

“The girl approached the vehicle crossing by foot, holding a bag,” arousing the suspicion of the security guards, a Defense Ministry statement said Wednesday after the incident.

They “ordered her to stop and even fired warning shots into the air,” the ministry said, but when the teenager continued approaching despite the calls to halt, the guards “shot her in the legs in order to stop her.” She was lightly injured.

Her father told Channel 2 that he was “very angry” his daughter was shot. “How do you shoot a little girl like that, injuring her?”

The father said he couldn’t believe she had made it all the way to the checkpoint, apparently on foot.

The past year of Palestinian attacks has seen several instances in which teenagers appeared to attempt to provoke gunfire from Israeli security forces in order to commit suicide.

According to sources within the Israel Defense Forces, the army understands no small number of terrorist attacks as attempts at suicide, a form of “suicide by cop,” or “suicide by soldier.”

“Most of the people have personal problems with their families or they themselves are unbalanced,” a senior IDF officer in the Central Command told The Times of Israel.

Several of the hundreds of Palestinian attackers over the past year have been minors under 18.