Israel police jailed over Palestinian left to die

JERUSALEM - Agence France-Presse

A Palestinian protestor waves a coffee pot at Israeli soldiers during a demonstration outside Ofer prison, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in Israeli jails on June 21, 2012. AFP Photo

A Jerusalem court on Monday sentenced two Israeli police officers to 30 months in jail for negligence over the death of a Palestinian car thief in 2008, Haaretz newspaper reported.
 
Omar Abu Jariban died after being left, injured and confused, on the side of a road. He had illegally entered Israel from Gaza and was seriously injured after a car he had stolen rolled over on a highway.
 
He was admitted to a Tel Aviv hospital and discharged into police custody two weeks later.
 
With no room left for him at an Israeli prison infirmary, the two officers drove him to the West Bank and left him on the side of a road between Jerusalem and Ramallah. His body was found there two days later.
 
Chief Inspector Baruch Peretz, the police officer on duty, and policeman Assaf Yekutieli, who admitted placing Abu Jariban on the side of the road where he later died of dehydration, were convicted of causing his negligent death in May.
 
On Monday, a Jerusalem magistrate's court judge Haim Liran handed down 30-month sentences against both men calling their conduct "ugly and nauseating," Haaretz reported.
 
"I find it hard to understand how, despite being fully aware of the detainees physical and mental state, they were unable to see and understand the distress of a man born in God's image," the paper quoted Liran as saying.