Israel cop to stand trial 5 years after killing Palestinian citizen in Kafr Kanna 

An Israeli police officer who shot and killed a Palestinian citizen in Kafr Kanna five years ago must face trial, the country’s Supreme Court ruled yesterday, reported Haaretz.

The Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, made the decision even though the officer Naor Yitzhak was cleared by an internal police investigation.

Video footage documenting the incident on 8 November 2014, showed Yitzhak shooting local resident Kheir Hamdan as he retreated after threatening officers with a knife.

According to Haaretz, Hamdan’s family was advised in 2015 that “the case against Yitzhak was closed because an internal police investigation had found him innocent”. The family’s appeal was rejected. Following the family’s petition, the Supreme Court has now overruled that previous decision.

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The justices stated that “the way the prosecution handled the case could create the appearance of preferential treatment and bias in that the ‘system’ could exempt policemen from responsibility for their actions by not putting them on trial, even though they caused a person’s death.”

The majority ruling mandates Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit to try Yitzhak.

Attorney Omar Khamaisi, part of the legal team representing the family, told Haaretz that the decision proves that the family was right to not give up, and constitutes “a slap in the face of Mahash (the Hebrew acronym for the Justice Ministry unit that investigates police misconduct) and the attorney general who decided to close the case”.

However, “Khamaisi went on to say that it was unclear what final decision will be made on the matter”.

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