Israeli Cop Has To Pay Up After Shooting Palestinian Professor Then Lying About Him ‘Throwing Rocks’

Israeli police have long been accused of carrying out unjustifiable acts of violence and brutality against Palestinians, but this time one was caught red-handed.


Rateb Abu Rahmeh is a Palestinian university professor from the West Bank village of Bil’in. But even though he had well-known high social standing, to Israeli police he was nothing more than target practice.

Now, that Israeli cop is being forced to pay 155,000 shekels ($40,200) in damages, after a ruling by the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court.

The Border Police Officer was determined to have shot Abu Rahmeh in the arm with a sponge-tipped bullet without justification and later falsely claiming that the professor had been throwing stones at police.

That turned out to be a bald-faced lie. Rateb was not throwing stones, and had done nothing to provoke the disturbing act of violence.

The Israeli news source, HaAretz, reports that Rateb Abu Rahmeh was a lecturer at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem “who has also been involved in the Seeds of Peace intercultural program.”

Abu Rahmeh “led demonstrations by dozens of village residents against the security fence. On the date in question, when they approached Israeli army concertina wire, border policemen used crowd dispersal equipment against them, and one of the policeman shot Abu Rameh in the leg with a sponge-tipped bullet. Abu Rahmeh was arrested and criminal charges were filed against him.”

The police officer Wahel Sabit, lied and claimed that Abu Rahmeh “had moved the fence and had thrown stones from short range at him, but a video clip of the incident proved the policeman’s account to be false. that the demonstrators were not unruly and that they began to disperse when a sound canon projecting shrill noise was deployed. After a military court judge viewed the video, he ordered Abu Rahmeh released immediately, after 14 days in custody.”
Later, Sabit was put on trial for his false report.

He claimed as a plea agreement that this was his “first operational mission that he had been assigned and he had been afraid of his commander.”

The plea saw him sentenced to seven months in prison by a magistrate’s court. When he appealed it was reduced to six months of community service.

This forced Abu Rahmeh to file civil suit against Sabit.

The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court Judge Gad Ehrenberg rejected the border cop’s claim that he was immune from prosecution.

The judge ruled that the officer, and not the tax-payers, was personally liable for the compensation to Abu Rahmeh because he had not acted in accordance with the rule of law and thus was not enforcing the law.

His actions were thus deemed to be outside of the course of his job as a law enforcement officer.

HaAretz explains that “the damage award would have been higher, but Abu Rahmeh failed to provide documentation supporting his claim of monetary losses as a result of the incident.”

Would forcing police officers to be personally liable in this way solve more issues of police brutality in Israel, the United States and globally?

http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/12/israeli-police-lying-cop-palestinian-professor/#



Shame that the kids who have been shot, killed and videod with the act of IDF planting knives on them can't do the same.

So more proof that Israel justice does work.
How many Palestinian militias have been tried and conficted of criminal acts?

Zero

Kids who are raised to hate israeli's and then throw rocks have suffered child ab use, and their parents should be brought up for such criminal acts.
People have died because of rocks being thrown and yet you give not once of of a shit that they have.
Look at the root cause and look to blame those who raise them with hate  and not at the Police having to protect the lives of innocent people that rock throwers target.

Again you have no utter understanding of moral equivalence