The Nawarah case represented by Adv. Firas Asali: In Aljazeera Search for Justice Drags on for Slain Palestinian Teen

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Parents of teenager shot dead by Israeli soldier four years ago continue to wait for sentencing while killer walks free.

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  • Ramallah, West Bank – Nearly four years after Nadeem Nawarah, 17, was killed by a single live round fired into his chest by an Israeli police officer, his family is still relentlessly pursuing justice.

    At a court hearing on Tuesday, the prosecutor asked for a 20 to 27-month prison sentence for the officer, Ben Deri, 21 at the time. He has pled guilty to a negligent killing charge, and sentencing is now scheduled for April 26.

    “The court [hearing] was like a drama. Of course there is no justice,” Siam Nawarah, Nadeem’s father, told Al Jazeera.

    Surrounded by large portraits of his son at his Ramallah home, Siam recounted how hope for justice progressively slipped away.

    “Court hearings were always postponed with no valid reason. If Nadeem had killed Ben Deri, what would have happened? I think the court would have made a decision after two or three weeks and put him in jail,” he said.

    At one time under house arrest, Ben Deri now walks free.

  • Stored on his laptop, Siam Nawarah keeps files of every video, article, blog post, and TV news segment that was ever published or broadcast about Nadeem’s killing. He sold his three hairdressing salons in order to follow the case – and perhaps because they reminded him of the time when most of his customers were Nadeem’s friends. He travelled to the US to lobby Congress because “Nadeem was killed by American weapons.”He later founded an association that offers psychological and legal support to other families who went through the same excruciating experience.

  • Culture of impunity

    According to B’Tselem figures, 99 Palestinians were shot and killed by Israeli security forces in the West Bank in 2015 (23 by border police and 76 by soldiers) and 17 in East Jerusalem. And yet, only 21 investigations were opened.

    Since a policy change in April 2011, the Israeli army is required to open a case automatically for every fatality that occurs outside of combat situations.

    “We don’t know whether they carry out an investigation or not,” Abu Eqtaish told Al Jazeera. “What we’re sure about is that there is a culture of impunity and that this year and in the past few years none of the killings led to an indictment.”

    The case of Mohammad Abu Daher, the teen killed on the same day as Nadeem, is only one example.

    “We all know he was killed, but it’s like he doesn’t exist,” Firas Asali, the Nawarah family’s lawyer, told Al Jazeera. “No one filed a complaint about him, there was no autopsy, and we don’t have any substantial evidence.

    “It would have made the case [Nadeem’s] stronger because then there would be evidence there wasn’t any negligence, that you have two people dead, not one,” Asali said.

    In 2014, B’Tselem stopped filing complaints to the Israeli military on behalf of Palestinians about killings and other types of violations in the West Bank.

  • “We realise the system is not designed to take any action against those responsible for violations against Palestinians, but it’s a whitewash mechanism that creates the pretence of a legitimate system that is actually looking at the complaints and checking them,” Yael Stein, research director at B’Tselem, told Al Jazeera.

 

For the Aljazeera article click here