Police officer may face charges in shooting death {edit}

Police officer may face charges in shooting death of East Jerusalem man

By Jonathan Lis

The Justice Ministry's Police Investigations Department is considering bringing an indictment against a police officer suspected of fatally shooting an East Jerusalem resident Wednesday in the nearby neighborhood of French Hill.

Officials expect the police officer to be charged with causing death by negligence. The officer has said that he shot Samir Rivhi Dari, a 36-year-old man from Isawiyah, when Dari tried to run him over, but the investigation indicates that Dari was not in his car when the officer opened fire.

"The shooting apparently took place under unjustified circumstances," a senior Investigations Department official said yesterday.

"The claim that Dari tried to run over the police officer has apparently been refuted," the official said. "He was not in the car at the time of the shooting. He was far away from the police officers and there was no physical contact between the sides during the shooting."

An autopsy performed at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute yesterday shows that the police officer shot Dari in the back. The bullet, which was fired from the pistol of the officer in question, entered Dari's heart and led to his death. Dari was buried yesterday afternoon.

More at;
Haaretz

<snip>

"A Border Police officer was charged Monday with the murder a Palestinian in the French Hill neighborhood of Jerusalem last November.

An Police Investigations Department (PID) inquiry revealed that officer Shmuel Yehezkel, 21, shot Samir Ribahi Dari in the back. The PID also refuted Yehezkel's claim that Dari, a resident of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Isawiyah, had tried to run him down with his car.

PID investigators gathered testimonies from witnesses of the incident. The version of events they pieced together differed drastically from that presented by the Jerusalem Police.

Following the inquiry, police investigators said: "it appears the circumstances of the incident were unjustified."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/668098.html