JERUSALEM — A Jerusalem court on Monday convicted two Israeli police officers of negligent homicide for abandoning an injured Palestinian man on a roadside, where he was found dead two days later.
The case has raised questions about failures that led to the death of Omar Abu Jarban, a car thief from the Gaza Strip who illegally lived in Israel.
Abu Jarban was still wearing hospital pants when he was left on the side of an Israeli highway near the West Bank at night in June 2008. One of the policemen testified he thought the man would be picked up by a passing Palestinian motorist.
“The defendants were closed off to the distress of a human being and left him to his fate in circumstances that any reasonable human being would have avoided and refrained from doing,” said Judge Haim Li-Ran in an almost 1,000-page ruling.
“The decision to drop this detainee in the circumstances that he was dropped off under, in the unlikely assumption that he would be picked up, is negligent,” Li-Ran said.
Abu Jarban was injured while driving a car he had stolen the month before. He was treated in two Israeli hospitals for his injuries.
After several weeks of treatment, Abu Jarban was transferred to police custody. He was meant to be referred to a prison medical facility for further care. But a prison clinic refused to treat him, and the two policemen then decided to abandon him on the roadside. His dehydrated body was found two days later.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 05/29/2012