Amnesty: West Bank shooting extrajudicial execution

Amnesty International on Friday described this week's shooting of a young Palestinian woman at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank as an "extrajudicial execution".

Amnesty International said on its website that an evidence it obtained indicates that the killing of Hadeel al-Hashlamoun by Israeli forces in Hebron was an extrajudicial execution.

Israeli soldiers shot and mortally wounded 18-year-old Hadeel al-Hashlamoun after they stopped her at a checkpoint in the Old City in Hebron.

Pictures of the stand-off that led to her death and accounts by eyewitnesses interviewed by Amnesty International show that she at no time posed a sufficient threat to the soldiers to make their use of deliberate
lethal force permissible. This killing is the latest in a long line of unlawful killings carried out by the Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank with near total impunity.

Israeli soldiers shot al-Hashlamoun at Checkpoint 56, otherwise known as Shoter, a small pedestrian crossing that restricts Palestinian movement in the vicinity of Hebron’s Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law.

Two eyewitnesses with whom Amnesty International spoke separately said that al-Hashlamoun arrived at the checkpoint at around 7.40am, and was stopped by the two soldiers at the checkpoint and ordered to
open her bag for a search. She was standing still, around three metres from the soldiers.

She opened her bag and showed it to the soldiers, who began to shout at her, at which point she froze, according to the eyewitnesses.

One of the eyewitnesses, Fawaz Abu Aisheh, 34, told Amnesty International that the Israeli soldiers were instructing al-Hashlamoun to “go back” in Hebrew, a language she seemed not to understand. Abu Aisheh attempted to mediate between al-Hashlamoun and
the soldiers, as he spoke Hebrew, but the soldiers ignored his attempts, and fired a shot towards the ground near al-Hashlamoun’s feet. A series of photos taken by an activist who was monitoring the checkpoint that morning show al-Hashlamoun between two soldiers
who seem to be nervous and pointing their guns at her.

The photos also show Abu Aisheh as he attempted to assist the girl to leave the checkpoint by moving a red plastic barrier.

Another eyewitness also said that al-Hashlamoun had tried to leave the checkpoint.

According to Abu Aisheh, the soldier who had shot first got up and moved closer to her, until he was about a metre away, and then shot at her upper body four or five times again while she was lying motionless on the ground. He said that the soldier shot a few times
despite other soldiers yelling at him to stop. The first witness also described the soldier moving closer to al-Hashlamoun and shooting her in the chest.

This escalation comes only few days after confrontations at al Aqsa Mosaque last week.

Source: MENA