Court names Border Police officer charged with killing Palestinian teen on Nakba Day

The Jerusalem District Court on Sunday cleared for publication the name of the Border Police officer accused of shooting to death a Palestinian teenager in the West Bank village of Beitunia last May.

Soldier Ben Dery, 21, of Rishon Letzion was arrested and charged last month for firing live bullets against orders, which resulted in the death of 17-year-old Nadim Nuwara.

The indictment states further that according to the orders that the Border Police soldiers received, they were supposed to fire rubber bullets at the demonstrators. Dery had an M-16 rifle with an attachment for firing rubber bullets. The rubber bullets were contained in a magazine marked in red, together with blanks. Dery replaced the bullets in the marked magazine with ordinary bullets for the M-16 to hide the fact that he was using live ammunition. At 1:45 P.M., four minutes after Nuwara threw a stone at the troops, Dery shot him in the chest, killing him.

After the incident, Nuwara’s father, Siam, found a single bullet that he said had penetrated his son’s body and remained inside the backpack he had been wearing. Shortly after the incident, officials of the Justice Ministry’s department for the investigation of police officers set a date with members of Nuwara’s family on which they would hand over the bullet, but the family reneged. The bullet was instead handed over to the offices of the Palestinian general prosecutor, and photographs of it were given to the defense establishment and to human-right groups.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.631672