{"id":527,"date":"2008-08-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-19T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"527"},"modified":"2008-08-19T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-19T00:00:00","slug":"human-rights-groups-petition-against-light-sentence-for-soldiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/2008\/08\/19\/human-rights-groups-petition-against-light-sentence-for-soldiers\/","title":{"rendered":"Human Rights Groups Petition against Light Sentence for Soldiers"},"content":{"rendered":"
In response to petition, Court orders State to explain its position and freezes court proceedings in case of IDF soldiers who shot a Palestinian man in Ni’lin<\/div>\n

UPDATE<\/strong>: In response to the petition submitted below, the Court ordered the State to respond to the petition within 21 days. The Court also issued an interim order, suspending military court proceedings until further notice. A Court hearing was set for September 28, 2008.<\/p>\n

JERUSALEM – August 19, 2008 – This morning, Ashraf Abu Rahma, who was shot by IDF soldiers in Ni\u2019lin while handcuffed and blindfolded, together with the Israeli human rights organizations B’Tselem, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, and Yesh Din filed an urgent petition to the High Court of Justice against the Judge Advocate General\u2019s decision to prosecute the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Omri Borberg, and the soldier who fired the shot, Staff Sgt. L, for \u201cunbecoming conduct,\u201d a light offense that does not result in a criminal record. <\/p>\n

In their petition, written by attorneys Limor Yehuda and Dan Yakir of ACRI, the petitioners demand that the indictment be altered to reflect the severity of the offense \u2013 threats made by means of a weapon and firing at a handcuffed detainee \u2013 which ostensibly constitute abuse of a detainee in aggravated circumstances, punishment for these acts is imprisonment for seven years. The petition was filed with urgency out of concern that the judicial proceeding against the defendants will be completed within a few days.<\/p>\n

The petitioners strongly condemn the handling of the matter by the Judge Advocate General (JAG), arguing that the light offense chosen indicates a weak response by the JAG\u2019s Office: \u201cIt transmits to officers and other soldiers an extremely grave message of contempt for human life, and paves the way for future cases. . . It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a systemic defect is involved, one that has spread not only among IDF officers but also among those responsible for enforcing law and order in the army\u201d.<\/p>\n

The petitioners contend that the decision to file a light indictment is unreasonable in the extreme, this also in light of Borberg\u2019s senior rank. The petitioners note that the main reason for the JAG\u2019s decision to file such a light indictment is that, \u201cthe transfer of the battalion commander from his position is a serious command measure.\u201d However, this command measure was transfer to another role in the corps, also at the rank of lieutenant colonel, without any hindrance to future promotion. The lenient treatment is also apparent from the public statement made by the army\u2019s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, who said he saw nothing preventing the battalion commander from being appointed to senior positions in the future, and that he will return to a command position in the army.<\/p>\n

The petition also notes the extreme unreasonableness of the JAG\u2019s decision, given the suspicions of other cases of abuse during the period in which Borberg was in command of the Ni\u2019lin area. In one of the cases, he was allegedly personally involved in the physical abuse of a detainee. The many complaints that reached the petitioner organizations, which are attached to the petition, raise the suspicion that, under Borberg\u2019s command, a general atmosphere prevailed in which soldiers were allowed to abuse detainees and the civilian population.<\/p>\n

With regard to the soldier L, one of the JAG\u2019s main points was that the soldier understood he had been given an order to fire at the detainee, although the order was patently illegal. The JAG\u2019s reasoning ignores the soldier\u2019s obligation to use judgment, and thus undermines the basic ethical concept of a patently illegal command. <\/p>\n

For previous response to the same case: https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/?p=525<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In response to petition, Court orders State to explain its position and freezes court proceedings in case of IDF soldiers … Read more…<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,17,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democracy-and-civil-liberties","category-international-humanitarian-law","category-the-occupied-territories"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.acri.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}