The commander of an Israeli soldier who fatally shot a wounded Palestinian attacker in Hebron testified in court on Thursday that the Palestinian had posed no danger to anyone in the moments before he was killed and that “there was no justification for firing.”
The company commander, Israel Defense Forces Major Tom Naaman, said he “did not feel any danger from him” when he stood near the Palestinian man lying on the ground.
“No one brought to my attention that the terrorist endangered anything,” Naaman said in court, according to Israeli Web site Ynet. “There was no such claim.”
Naaman testified that he had asked the soldier, Sergeant Elor Azaria, who had authorized him to shoot the wounded man in the head.
He quoted the sergeant as saying: “The terrorist was alive, and he has to die.”
Azaria is being tried in a military court in Jaffa, Israel, on a charge of manslaughter in connection with the death of the Palestinian, Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, on March 24.
He has pleaded not guilty.
The episode began when al-Sharif and another Palestinian man stabbed and lightly wounded an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint in the southern West Bank city of Hebron. Other soldiers opened fire, seriously wounding al-Sharif and killing the second Palestinian.
Azaria was not present for the initial attack or the gunfire in response, but arrived about six minutes later. A video shows him cocking his gun and shooting al-Sharif in the head as he lay in the road, still moving.
The killing and the manslaughter trial have prompted a nationwide debate in Israel over the conduct of Azaria, a member of perhaps the most respected institution in Israel, the Israel Defense Forces. That debate probably played a role in the political machinations that led to the resignation of former Israeli minister of defense Moshe Yaalon. Avigdor Lieberman now holds that post.
Azaria’s lawyers have maintained that he shot al-Sharif in the head, because he was afraid the man was carrying an explosive device.
However, Naaman told the court there was nothing about al-Sharif’s clothing that indicated that he might be wearing an explosive belt, according to the English-language Web site of Haaretz, a leading Israeli newspaper.
“The terrorist, dressed in black, was moving his head,” Naaman said. “I see the knife. It was relatively far away, not within his grasp.”
At that point, Naaman said, citing a platoon commander, other soldiers had fired six bullets at al-Sharif, and he appeared to be dead, Haaretz reported.
The major testified that it seemed at first as if one of the civilians in the vicinity had fired the fatal shot to al-Sharif’s head and that he later learned it had been Azaria who fired.
“I was angry at him for doing this,” Naaman told the court. “Essentially, a shooting had been conducted at the scene that I was in charge of, without my permission.”
Speaking on Israeli radio, one of Azaria’s lawyers, Ilan Katz, disputed the major’s account and said it had changed over time.
“His first utterance, which he repeated many times, had the soldier telling him: ‘The terrorist’s moving,’” Katz said, but that “has gradually changed to ‘he’s alive, he’s got to die.’”
Katz added that from Azaria’s point of view, “the terrorist was alive, endangering the force, endangering the soldier, and that’s why the soldier shot him.”
A pathologist from the Israeli National Center of Forensic Medicine, Hadas Gips, testified that al-Sharif’s heart was still beating when he was shot in the head, according to Israeli radio.
His other injuries were not immediately fatal, Gips said.
“Had he received medical care immediately, he would almost certainly have survived,” Gips testified, according to Haaretz. “Even without it, the deceased might have survived.”
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