Israeli police officer jailed over 2014 death of Palestinian teenager
An Israeli border police officer who fatally shot a Palestinian teenager at a demonstration while the boy was posing no threat to soldiers has been sentenced to nine months in prison after a protracted court process.
The father of 17-year-old Nadeem Nawara, whose case was covered by the Guardian and other international media four years ago, described the sentence for causing death by negligence as “ridiculous” and claimed that the officer, Ben Deri, had murdered his son.
Deri’s plea bargain was held up by the teenager’s family and others in comparison to the long prison sentences typically handed down by the courts to Palestinians found guilty of killing Israelis.
Nadeem was one of three Palestinian teenagers shot with live ammunition over a period of over an hour during a stone-throwing demonstration near Ofer prison on 15 May 2014, the day each year when Palestinians mark the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, the war around the time of the creation of Israel in 1948.
Mohammad Salameh, 16, was fatally shot an hour after Nawara, and Mohamed al-Azi, who was 15 at the time, survived a gunshot wound to the chest.
At the time an Israeli military spokesman tried to deflect outrage over the shootings, claiming footage had been edited to present an unfair picture of events.
The sentence on Wednesday comes as Israeli security forces’ use of live fire is again in the spotlight after the fatal shooting of several dozen Palestinians at the Gaza border fence in recent weeks
Deri was tried only for firing the fatal shots that killed Nadeem, as only the teenager’s family allowed for the body to be exhumed and an autopsy to be carried out. The examination found Nadeem had been killed by an Israeli M16 roundto the chest.
The prosecution demonstrated in court that police and soldiers at the scene had been ordered only to use rubber-coated steel pellets, and that Deri had replaced the magazine on his M16 with one containing live rounds.
At 1.45pm, four minutes after Nadeem threw a stone at Israeli forces, Deri shot him in the chest. Video footage seen by the Guardian at the time and taken from a nearby security camera showed that Nadeem was 80-200 metres from the soldiers when he was shot.
The court agreed to a plea bargain which dropped a charge of manslaughter, describing Deri’s actions as having involving a “high degree of negligence” when he loaded his weapon with live bullets. Deri was ordered to pay the victim’s family $14,000 (£10,000).
“This is not how justice is done,” said Nadeem’s father, Siam Nawara, after the sentencing. “I never expected the Israeli court to do justice for my martyred son, but I had to do all I can to present a solid case and to expose the Israeli judicial system before the world and I did.”
He added: “Ben Deri who murders – and I am convinced that he intentionally committed murder – gets nine months and in the height of chutzpah I hear that they are considering appealing the severity of the sentence.
“We are dealing with an entire system that discriminates on the basis of race and arrives at decisions that are far from just.”
The case leaves multiple questions unanswered, including whether it was Deri or or others who fired the other live rounds. The court accepted that Deri had made two weapons handling errors that led him to fire the round that killed Nadeem.
The method used by Israeli border police to fire large rubber bullets from an M16 rifle requires the use of a long barrel extension preventing live rounds being fired through it. The rubber bullet is placed in the extension and blank cartridges are loaded into the gun itself, with the force of the explosion from the blanks propelling the projectile.
“The defendant did not check that his magazine contained only blanks and did not load a rubber bullet into the [barrel extension] as required. These two oversights, which amount to gross negligence, caused the death of the deceased,” the court judgment said.