New trial dates have been set for Tristan Anderson’s civil case against the Israeli Military. The new dates follow a recent ruling from the High Court of Israel forcing the Israeli Police to re-open their investigation into the near fatal shooting, which occurred when Israeli Border Police opened fire on a crowd of Palestinian and international activists following a protest against the building of the Apartheid “Seperation” Wall in the West Bank village of Ni’ilin March 13, 2009.
Tristan was shot in the face from close range with a high velocity tear gas grenade, causing severe damage to his brain and paralysis to half his body.
The Israeli High Court has ordered the police to actually interview the officers involved in the shooting, who to date have never been questioned about it. (The findings of the new investigative report are scheduled to be released shortly before Anderson’s civil trial has been scheduled to begin.)
“Officers on the ground need to be afraid,” said Gabrielle Silverman, the girlfriend of Tristan Anderson and witness to his shooting. “We need real accountability for police violence, and for abuse against civilians by the military.”
High Velocity Tear Gas is manufactured in the USA.
Court responding to petition charging that nobody questioned the Border Police soldier who fired the tear-gas canister that cracked Tristan Anderson’s skull in 2009.
Tristan Anderson with his parents
Israel’s High Court of Justice on Wednesday ordered investigators to reopen their probe into the incident of a Border Police officer who shot a tear-gas canister at an American citizen in the West Bank in 2009, after the state acceded to a petition on the matter.
The court was responding to a petition purporting to uncover flaws in the West Bank district police’s probe of the incident, which occurred during a protest at the West Bank village of Na’alin.
The petition states that investigators never visited the village and questioned only a small number of the Border Police troops who were involved. It also claims that it is not clear whether the police officer who fired the tear gas canister was ever questioned.
The incident took place on March 13, 2009. After Friday prayers, residents of Na’alin began a protest march against construction of a section of the separation barrier on the village’s land. Also participating in the march were Israeli and foreign citizens – including Tristan Anderson, 38, an American citizen.
Anderson, a left-wing activist and photographer who has published reports of his travels throughout the world, was documenting the demonstration in Na’alin.
When the marchers reached the separation barrier, a clash developed with Israeli forces. Border Police troops used crowd-control methods, including tear-gas grenades.
As far as is known, Anderson was not among the demonstrators. But as he stood in the rear courtyard of the village mosque, observing what was happening, he was struck in the head by a tear-gas canister that smashed his skull, causing severe brain damage that affects him to this day, the petition claims.
The description of the event suggests that the canister was fired against regulations. Under the regulations in effect at the time – and today as well – security troops may not fire tear-gas canisters directly at demonstrators.
In an investigative report that ran in Haaretz’s weekend supplement after the incident, a Border Police soldier said that often, the Border Police troops “don’t fire the tear gas at the proper range” and that their training is “not serious”. Indeed, in recent years, several demonstrators have been struck by tear-gas canisters. Two of them, Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahma of Bil’in and Mustafa Tamimi of Nebi Sallah, died as a result.
The West Bank district police investigated the events of that day. But the petition, which was submitted by Anderson’s parents and the non-governmental organization Yesh Din, states that the police questioned only the commander and three members of the Border Police company that operated in the village — even though the company commander testified explicitly that at least three teams, deployed in various locations, had been operating in the village that day.
This is a significant issue since the troops who were questioned had been deployed in a certain position which, according to various testimonies, was not the position from which Anderson was struck.
The Border Police troops’ testimony indicates that had struck a demonstrator – but from their description and the place where they were deployed, it seems the demonstrator they struck was not Anderson. It was someone else who was wounded that day.
According to the petition, that other injury of a demonstrator was never investigated by the police.
In addition, material in the investigation file indicates that the detectives of the West Bank district police never went to the village to examine the location first-hand.
In December 2009, the State Prosecutor’s Office announced that the investigation of the West Bank district police was over and the case would be closed. Two appeals subsequently filed did lead to some supplemental work on the case, but in February 2012, a decision was made once more to close it.
The current petition was submitted in response to that decision.
No comment has yet been received from the West Bank district police.
Parents of US Activist Critically Wounded Following West Bank Protest Appeal to High Court of Israel: The Police Investigation was Shockingly Negligent – Demand a Serious, Professional Investigation into the Shooting of their Son.
Tristan Anderson (41, of Oakland, CA) was severely wounded after having been shot in the head with a high velocity tear gas grenade* (made in the USA) fired by Israeli Border Police following a protest in the West Bank Village of Ni’lin, resulting in severe permanent brain damage and paralysis to half his body.
Tristan Anderson with his parents
Attorneys for Anderson’s family, along with Israeli NGO Yesh Din, will appear before the Israeli High Court of Justice on Wednesday, JULY 10. The petition challenges the investigation that they claim was blatantly inadequate, with the identity of the shooter still being actively withheld to this day.
“Tristan will live the rest of his life with serious mental and physical limitations and chronic pain. This has devastated his life and profoundly affected our family forever,” said Nancy Anderson, Tristan’s mother.
No criminal charges have been brought against any police or military personnel involved in the 2009 shooting of their son. Video evidence uncovered during the course of an ongoing civil lawsuit (trial begins November 10, 2013 in Jerusalem for the civil suit) raises further questions on the credibility of State witnesses, who in contradiction to sworn testimony, are clearly seen shooting tear gas directly at protesters from close range in the video, which was taken earlier that day. The video also raises serious questions relating to the true locations of the various squads of Border Police present at the time of the shooting, with investigators opting only to question those squads that were on the other side of the town at the time the shooting occurred, while failing to question the squad that was stationed on the nearby hill where activist witnesses say the shots came from. As well, investigators failed to visit the scene of the shooting and made no attempts to collect physical evidence.
See “Aftermath of the shooting of Tristan Anderson Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 for further video.
Michael Sfard and Emily Schaeffer, attorneys for the Anderson family commented:
“The astonishing negligence of this investigation and of the prosecutorial team that monitored its outcome is unacceptable, but it epitomizes Israel’s culture of impunity. Tristan’s case is actually not rare; it represents hundreds of other cases of Palestinian victims whose investigations have also failed.”
Tristan joined the ranks of scores of other protesters who have been seriously injured or killed during demonstrations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in recent years. On March 13, 2009 he was in Ni’alin demonstrating against the annexation of village lands to build the controversial “Separation Wall” when he was shot. Witnesses insist there was no stone throwing in his immediate surroundings at the time when he was shot, and that the shooting was “unexpected and unprovoked”.
“Tristan’s shooting is part of a pattern of deadly violence being used against protesters in the Occupied Territories, who are not recognized as having a fundamental right to political self-determination,” said Gabrielle Silverman, Tristan’s girlfriend, and a witness to his shooting. “We need real accountability and a high standard of human rights, but instead what we get is the military running cover for their soldiers.”
The family of Tristan Anderson is calling the investigation “a cover up and a sham”.
*Tristan Anderson was shot with a High Velocity Tear Gas grenade- sometimes also called “Extended Range Tear Gas”- which is manufactured by Combined Systems Inc in Jamestown, Pennsylvania.
On Thursday 31st January the Supreme Court will hold two sessions regarding two petitions affecting the future of the Palestinian village Susiya. One will discuss the organization Regavim’s petition to expedite the demolition of most of the village. The other petition seeks to prevent the villagers’ remaining lands from being rendered off limits to them.
Susiya, a Palestinian village in the south of the West Bank, which is not connected to any water, electricity (sic) or sewage infrastructure, faces imminent demolition. The village’s future remains shrouded in doubt after its original inhabitants were driven from their homes in the 1980’s, when the area was declared a closed archaeological zone, and Palestinians were barred from entering. With no other options and no alternative location, the residents moved to their nearby farmlands, where they could not get building permits.
The first session involves a petition by the far-right organization Regavim, which petitioned the Court together with the nearby Jewish settlement of Susya, to expedite the demolition of most of the buildings in Palestinian Susiya. Such demolition will in all likelihood mean the complete disappearance of the village. The petitioners have also requested and received a temporary injunction that prohibits any further development in the village until a decision is issued. RHR is representing the villagers. The petition was submitted against the Minister of Defense and the inhabitants of Palestinian Susiya.
The second hearing covers a petition by the villagers, with Rabbis for Human Rights, responding to the blockage of about 3,000 dunams of their farmland in the area. The petition names the Minister of Defense, the heads of the Civil Administration, the Chief of the Hebron Police, the Susya Cooperative Association, and the Har Hevron Local Council.
Practices that must end:
A. Unlawful collaboration between Susya settlers, the illegal settlement outposts and the IDF in the area
The Palestinian complainants are unable to access their farmland, as a result of the use of threats and violence by the settlers of Susya and neighboring outposts. The illegal actions of these settlers are executed in collaboration with security forces that remove the complainants from their lands without military orders to do so, or with temporary, one-day orders. Moreover, police enforce the orders against the complainants and their escorts, and fail to properly investigate Palestinian complaints of violence from the settlers’ side and land encroachment. Finally, the Civil Administration refuses to arrange for the complainants to enter the areas from which they have been blocked. The authorities’ behavior is in violation of Israeli, international humanitarian, and human rights law, which require the occupying military government to protect the local Palestinian population and its fundamental rights.
B. Blockage of Palestinians’ entry to their farmlands as usurpation by the settlement
As Palestinians are blocked from accessing their land, Susya residents have gradually encroached on this private land, all the while committing crimes such as attacks, threats, encroachment, malicious property damage, etc. By the time the petition was submitted, settlers from Susya and neighboring outposts had seized about 400 dunams, representing about 15% of the area “prohibited” to Palestinians on their own lands.
This petition therefore makes two demands: to require the respondents to guarantee freedom of movement of the claimants to their lands and to protect the claimants from violence committed by extremist settlers.
Attorney Quamar Mishirqi-Asad, Rabbis for Human Rights:“We fear that the Court will draw an un-based symmetry between the two petitions and reject them both – because prima facie the state and security forces are already addressing the issue, at their own pace: both in demolitions and in blocking access. But in both cases the state is harming Palestinians in a way that is fundamentally unconstitutional, implementing a policy that is contradictory to basic democratic principles. In the first case the state prevents equal planning and representation in planning bodies for the Palestinian residents. In the second, it ignores the harm being done to Palestinians when they attempt to enter their lands; often the security forces collaborate in preventing this access. The Court must know the following: the state is not working to repair what is distorted; it is the very source of the unfair actions against which the Court’s involvement is requested. Both the law enforcement and planning bodies flagrantly discriminate against Palestinians.”
Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Rabbis for Human Rights:“Regavim declares that its goal is ‘to protect the lands of the nation.’ When that slogan is compared to the organization’s actions, its agenda becomes clear: Regavim is petitioning for the destruction of buildings on private Palestinian lands, with ‘planning’ pretexts – indicating that Regavim considers even private Palestinian land to be ‘the lands of the nation’ that should be protected from its lawful owners, whom it considers foreign invaders. That agenda glorifies discrimination and the trampling of rights; it is based on a distorted interpretation of Jewish sources, setting an agenda which debases the giants of Jewish thought who deem such discrimination and theft from non-Jews sinful. Rabbi Akiva himself, in a ruling (that did not apply only to the Diaspora), said that even a non-Jew who fails to uphold the seven Noahide commandments may not be stolen from, oppressed or defrauded, and anything stolen from him must be returned (Bava Kama 113b; Hulin 94a; Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Robbery and Loss 1:2; Laws of Theft 1:1; Shulchan Aruch Choshen Mishpat 348:2, 359:1). All of Regavim’s actions must be seen in light of its overarching goal.”
Jawaher Abu Rahmah from the West Bank village of Bil’in village, died of cardiac arrest caused by inhalation of excessive amounts of tear gas. The Israeli High Court laid the onus of collecting evidence to justify an investigation on the family, instead of police.
Israeli High Court judges ruled today that the family of the late Jawaher Abu Rahmah and the Bil’in Popular Committee should submit documents and testimonies indicating that Abu Rahmah’s death was caused by tear-gas inhalation to the Israeli Judge Advocate General (JAG) until September 1st. The Justices ordered to reconsider his decision to not launch an investigation of the incident
By doing so, the court unjustly laid the burden of collecting evidence with the victims to justify the opening of an investigation, while it should clearly lay with the authorities and, in fact, be the result of such an investigation. During the hearing, Jusitce Miriam Naor told the State Attorney that once the evidence is submitted by the appellants, “[The State] must consider whether to launch an investigation with an open mind. After all, demonstrations do not normally end in death.”
The ruling was given at the conclusion of the first hearing in an appeal launched by Abu Rahmah’s mother, Subhiyah, and the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, with the assistance of the Israeli human rights organization, Yesh Din. The appellants petitioned that the court instruct the JAG to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of Jawaher Abu Rahmah, who collapsed during a demonstration in Bil’in, after breathing tear gas shot by Israeli forces in massive quantities to disperse the protesters.
Mohamad Khatib of the Bil’in Popular Committee said, “Israeli forces regularly use excessive force to try and crush Palestinian demonstrations. With more than 270 unarmed demonstrators killed since the year 2000, no lip service comment by the judiciary on the informality of how our people are slain is going to cut it. Israeli soldiers are sheltered by a wall of unaccountability, supported by today’s ruling that it is the victims who should produce evidence, and not a criminal investigation by the authorities.”
Background
Jawaher Abu Rahmah, 36, resident of the Palestinian village of Bil’in, was hurt on December 31, 2010 during the weekly demonstration against the route of the separation barrier on her village’s land. According to demonstrators’ testimonies, Israeli security forces used widespread and perhaps unprecedented quantities of tear gas that day, to disperse the demonstration. At some point Jawaher, who was standing next to her house inside the village, some distance from site the demonstration, was caught in a cloud of tear gas. As a result of inhaling the gas, Abu Rahmah began to suffer from respiratory distress and collapsed shortly thereafter. She was evacuated to a hospital in Ramallah, where she died less than 24 hours later. In the days following the incident, anonymous Israeli Army sources released varied and unlikely claims about the circumstances of Abu Rahmah’s death – including the untruthful claim that she was a leukemia patient – and all so as to persuade the public, with no investigation, that the Israeli Army is not responsible for her unnecessary death, and even that the Palestinians had invented the details of the incident.
Instead of immediately ordering an investigation into the circumstances of her death, the Israeli Army held only an operational debriefing. According to the petitioners, the operational debriefing is a tool to derive operational lessons, but is not a tool meant to collect evidence or establish personal responsibility, and therefore cannot substitute a criminal investigation. The findings of the debriefing are confidential, and it is not known what investigative activity was carried out, who was interviewed or which documents were made available to the investigators. However, we do know that not a single civilian eyewitness was questioned, not one medical professional was interviewed, and apparently no medical documents were made available to the investigators.
In the JAG’s response to the petitioners’ inquiry shortly after the incident, he rejected the demand to open an investigation, claiming that the operational debriefing and other inquiries made after the event found that “there was no causal link between the event and the death of the deceased.” This contradicts the recent change in Israeli Army investigation policy which was declared just days before the Turkel Commission, according to which a criminal investigation would be launched into every Palestinian civilian death which occurs during an Israeli Army operation in circumstances that is not “actual combat.” The JAG admitted that had Jawaher been killed today he would have ordered an investigation. Thus, the JAG Corps is evading launching an investigation, hiding behind the “technical” argument that the policy was changed a few weeks after the incident.
The petition argues that the decision not to order a criminal investigation of the event is unreasonable in the extreme, because “the circumstances and reasons for the death of Jawaher, an unarmed civilian who was hurt while in the middle of her village, are unclear to this day, and in view of the fact that her death was not a ‘natural death,’ the respondent is obligated by both Israeli law and international law to investigate her death.
