Israeli cops face jail for leaving ill Palestinian to die

An Israeli court on Monday found two policemen guilty of negligent homicide after they dumped an injured Palestinian prisoner at the side of a West Bank road and left him to die, legal documents showed. “By setting down the deceased in the condition and under the circumstances which they did, the accused breached their duty of care toward the deceased,” Jerusalem magistrate Haim Liran wrote in his ruling, a copy of which was obtained by AFP. “They should have anticipated, as anybody would, that the deceased would have difficulty managing on his own,” he added. “Any ordinary person would have seen that the deceased’s distress was likely to increase with time and that he was in danger of leaving this life, as indeed happened.” Sentence is to be handed down at a later date. Israeli daily Haaretz said the maximum penalty for negligent homicide is three years in prison. The court was told that in May 2008, Omar Abu Jariban, a Palestinian staying in Israel without the necessary permit, was seriously injured in an accident while driving a stolen car. He was admitted to a Tel Aviv hospital and discharged into police custody two weeks later. With no room left for him at an Israeli prison infirmary, the two officers drove him to the West Bank and left him on the side of a road between Jerusalem and Ramallah. “The two accused saw with their own eyes the prisoner while he was at the police station and during the drive in the police car until they set him down,” Liran said, convicting Chief Inspector Baruch Peretz and policeman Assaf Yekutieli, who helped him transport and dump the sick man. “It is not possible that they did not see, as would any reasonable person, that he was unable to walk unassisted or to aid himself in any way,” the magistrate added.