After the Israeli military advocate general declared that soldiers involved in the murder of Omar Asaad (80) will face no legal action but will be subjected to disciplinary action and reprimand, Palestinian authorities have asked the US to conduct an investigation to establish accountability in the death of the elderly Palestinian.
Asaad, a dual citizen of Palestine and the US, was stopped by the occupation forces in January 2022 at a makeshift checkpoint near his hometown of Jaljiliya near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. He was dragged from his car, bound and blindfolded, and then left on the ground overnight with four other Palestinians despite him complaining of a heart attack.
18 months ago, Zionist army terrorists kidnapped an 80-year-old Palestinian & left him tied in a cold & empty construction site for an entire night. In the morning he was found dead. Today Zionist authorities closed the investigation against the terrorists. No one will be charged https://t.co/2WjovVCCJl pic.twitter.com/hotaA2ASFI
— Asaf Ronel (@AsafRonel) June 13, 2023
He was later found dead by people who came looking for him after the occupation soldiers left the area.
The Palestinian foreign ministry issued a statement calling the decision to take no legal action against the Israeli soldiers criminal. It said that nobody believed in the Israeli investigations in any case, which are mostly a sham to mislead the world community. It claimed that most of the Israeli investigations end with the acquittal of the accused and are a way to eliminate existing evidence of the crime of killing innocent Palestinians, Wafa news agency reported.
Whether you’re a toddler like Mohammed Tamimi, a great-grandfather like Omar Assad, a journalist like Shireen Abu Akleh, Zionists can kill you with total impunity, without jeopardizing a cent of the rewards they get from @JoeBiden and @EUinIsrael states https://t.co/S3Lf9l8DSn
— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) June 6, 2023
The Palestinian ministry asked the US to investigate the killing of Asaad, saying that “the so-called judiciary system, prosecution and courts in Israel are integral part of the occupation system, bearing in mind that the majority of crimes are ignored and no investigations are conducted into their circumstances.”
According to one study, between 2017 and 2021, Israeli forces were prosecuted in less than 1% of the hundreds of registered complaints of offenses against Palestinians.
Asaad’s family members have already written to the Joe Biden administration for an investigation into his killing by the Israeli soldiers.
