Israeli Cleared in Death of Arab Girl

JERUSALEM, Nov. 15 - An Israeli military court on Tuesday cleared an Army captain of accusations that he shot repeatedly, and from close range, at a 13-year-old Palestinian girl who already had been shot, apparently fatally, by soldiers under his command.

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Iman al-Hams, 13, was fatally shot in 2004 by Israeli soldiers who suspected a bomb was in her bag.

Forum: The Middle East

The officer, identified only as Captain R, was acquitted of charges that included illegally firing a weapon and conduct unbecoming an officer in the death of the girl, Iman al-Hams.

According to a Palestinian doctor who examined Iman, she was shot at least 15 times on Oct. 5, 2004, near an army outpost along the southern border of the Gaza Strip, near the town of Rafah.

Soldiers said they had opened fire from an observation post because they had suspected the girl was carrying a bomb in her bag, but no weapon was found.

After she fell to the ground, Captain R approached her and repeatedly fired at or near her body, according to news media reports in Israel, where the case received widespread attention.

The girl's family denounced the ruling.

"We were not expecting much from this court," Muhammad al-Hams, an uncle of the girl, told The Associated Press. "It is another indication of how cheap the life of an innocent girl is to an Israeli judge."

Iman's family said she had been on her way to school. But the military said she was not traveling in the direction of a school, and was in an extremely tense area that the military had declared off limits to Palestinians. Gunmen frequently fired at Israeli soldiers from the surrounding area.

In a statement, the military said the court had accepted Captain R's testimony that he had fired not "with the intent of hitting the deceased but rather as a means of deterrence to secure a dangerous area."

Soldiers in Captain R's company testified that his shots had struck the girl, not the ground. The court rejected their testimony as unreliable, saying the soldiers had wanted Capt. R removed from his post.

# posted by Brian @ 12:29 AM