Wednesday 19 December 2007

Failure to Prosecute Crimes Against Palestinian Civilians

Israeli Defence Force statistics, provided to human rights NGO Yesh Din at the organization's demand, on results of Military Police investigations of criminal offenses in which IDF soldiers harmed Palestinians and their property since the beginning of the second Intifada in September 2000 until June 2007, show that some 90 percent of these investigation files were closed with no indictment. Over nearly seven years 1,091 criminal investigations were opened following offenses which include killing and injury of civilians, abuse, damages to property and others. These investigations resulted in 118 indictments only, of which 101 led to convictions of the accused. The data also show that out of the 239 investigations on killing and injury of Palestinian civilians not involved in the hostilities, only 16 resulted in convictions: less than 7 percent of the investigations on this matter.
More detailed information appears on the five-page data sheet prepared by Yesh Din: http://www.yesh-din.org/site/index.php?page=index&lang=en&id
Thanks for this to Lior Yavne of Yesh Din, who is a regular reader of the blog.

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