IOF Probe: Soldiers left Elderly Palestinian American to Die in “Ethical Failure”

By Staff, Agencies

Two “Israeli” military officers will be removed from their positions immediately and a third will be formally censured over the death of a 78-year-old Palestinian American man, who suffered a heart attack after he was bound, gagged and abandoned in a half-constructed building by “Israeli” troops earlier this month, the “Israel” Occupation Forces [IOF] said Monday night.

The punishments against the commanders are the result of an internal disciplinary probe. A Military Police investigation into the case is ongoing, which will determine if charges will be filed against the soldiers involved.

According to the internal investigation, which was presented to IOF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi on Monday, a group of soldiers from the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, which operates solely in the West Bank and has been long-plagued by allegations of brutality and abuse against Palestinians, on January 12 set up a checkpoint outside the central West Bank village of Jiljilya, stopping cars and checking the identification documents of people inside.

One of those to pass through the checkpoint was Omar Asad, 78. According to the soldiers, Asad refused to identify himself when asked, so they bound his hands with zip-ties and moved him to the courtyard of a nearby abandoned building in the near-freezing January night. In order to prevent him from calling out and telling others about the checkpoint, the soldiers also gagged him, tying a strip of fabric over his mouth, the probe found.

Three other Palestinians were brought to the same building. When the soldiers decided to pack up the checkpoint roughly half an hour later, they untied the four Palestinians and let them go, according to the investigation.

By that time, Asad was largely unresponsive. But the soldiers left him in the building without “realizing the signs of distress or other suspicious signs regarding his health. In light of his behavior, the soldiers assumed he was sleeping and didn’t try to wake him,” the IOF said.

The military probe’s findings largely matched the claims of the three other Palestinians who were at the scene, who said the soldiers saw that Asad was not fully conscious and left him anyway.

Asad, an American citizen who had lived in the US for many years, was found dead a few hours later with one zip-tie still around one of his hands and a blindfold over his eyes. An autopsy conducted by the Palestinian Authority determined that he had died of a stress-induced heart attack, brought on by being bound and gagged. Asad had previously undergone open-heart surgery and was in poor health, according to his family.

Kohavi described the Asad’s death as an extremely grave ethical failure by the soldiers involved.

The investigation “also found professional lacunae in the planning and execution of the” checkpoint, the IOF said.

In light of these failures, the commander of the soldiers’ platoon and the commander of their company will be immediately removed from their positions and will be barred from any command positions for the next two years, and the head of the Netzah Yehuda Battalion will be formally censured by the head of the IOF Central Command, the military said.