In a new development on the shocking incident that evoked global condemnation, the commander of an Israeli police officer who gunned down a Palestinian man with autism, has said to an inquiry commission that the unarmed man posed no danger to anyone and should not have been shot.
“He didn’t attack or do anything,” the commander testified, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “He was definitely not resisting.”
The shooting of Eyad al-Hallaq, 30, who was on his way to a school on 30th May, for those with a disability, came five days after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, and quickly became a rallying cry against police brutality at political protests that have roiled Israel for much of the summer.
Mr al-Hallaq was about about 140 metres from the entrance to his school when police officers called to him as he entered the Old City through the Lions Gate.
Rather than stop, he ran along the Via Dolorosa. When the initial officers reported a potential “terrorist,” several others gave chase.
One of them, a 21-year-old commander who was just days away from leaving the force, told investigators he fired at Mr al-Hallaq’s lower body while racing after him, but missed.
Seeking cover, Mr al-Hallaq turned into the gate of a fenced-in area used by sanitation workers where, according to witnesses, he cowered against a wall as two Border Police officers cornered him: the 21-year-old and his 19-year-old partner who was a few weeks out of basic training.
Both were performing their compulsory military service in the Border Police, a paramilitary arm of the Israeli police that operates on the West Bank, in parts of Jerusalem and in other volatile settings and is frequently called upon in situations with the potential to escalate into violence.
Witnesses have said that a teacher of Mr al-Hallaq’s saw the episode unfolding and tried to intervene, shouting at the officers that Mr al-Hallaq posed no threat.
But the commander’s testimony, as reported by Haaretz, suggests that, with or without disabilities, Mr al-Hallaq should not have been shot.
