Relatively mild indictments likely for soldiers who killed Palestinian teen

The State Attorney’s Office notified the High Court of Justice Wednesday that pending a hearing, it would issue indictments for the relatively mild charge of “reckless and negligent use of firearms” against IDF soldiers responsible for the fatal shooting of a Palestinian teenager in 2013.

Samir Awad, 17, was shot four times in a clash with over a dozen IDF soldiers near the West Bank town of Budrus after the army said he tried to sneak across the security barrier. Palestinian reports at the time said the soldiers fired at the high school student for approaching the barrier.

If the indictments are handed down, they will be done through the State Attorney’s Office and not the Military Advocate General, since the two main suspects have already completed their two-year mandatory military service and are no longer under the jurisdiction of the military court.

According to Hebrew media reports, a preliminary inquiry found that Awad was shot in violation of the IDF’s open fire regulations.

However, the Military Advocate General’s official investigation dragged on for over a year and yielded few results, noting it could not conclusively determine which of the 16 soldiers involved in the incident was responsible for shooting Awad; forensic and ballistics testing stalled the investigation a number of times.

One officer in the Military Advocate General corps called some of the shots fired “problematic,” according to a report in Haaretz, and due to the complexity of the investigation, it was ultimately unable to decide whether to indict any of the soldiers.

Last year, the teen’s father Ahmed Awad, together with the non-profit organization B’Tselem, petitioned the Supreme Court to force the State Attorney to either make a ruling or close the case.

B’Tselem said the nature of the charges likely to be handed down marked a “new low in Israeli authorities’ disregard for the lives of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories,” and said that the incident necessitated more serious charges, such as murder or manslaughter, for the soldiers responsible.

During the proceedings, the High Court of Justice slammed the Military Advocate General’s office for the delay in completing the inquiry and for allowing the two soldiers involved in the shooting to be released from the army before the investigation was completed.