In an incident that has drawn condemnation on social media and comparisons with George Floyd’s death in the U.S., Israeli police shot dead an unarmed autistic Palestinian man in Jerusalem’s Old City on Saturday after saying they suspected he was carrying a weapon.
Relatives identified the deceased man as Iyad Halak, 32. They said he suffered from autism and was heading to the school for students with special needs where he studied each day when he was shot.
“They killed him in cold blood,” Halak’s mother, Rana, told Israel’s Channel 12 TV.
In a statement, Israeli police said they spotted a suspect “with a suspicious object that looked like a pistol.” When he failed to obey orders to stop, officers opened fire, the statement said. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld later said no weapon was found.
Channel 12 said members of Israel’s paramilitary border police force fired at Halak’s legs and chased him into a dead-end alley. It said a senior officer ordered a halt in fire as they entered the alley, but that a second officer did not listen and fired six or seven bullets from an M-16 rifle, killing Halak. The report said both officers were taken into custody and interrogated for several hours.
