Iyad Halaq: Israeli court acquits officer who killed autistic Palestinian man

An Israeli court has acquitted a border police officer charged with recklessly killing an autistic Palestinian man in occupied East Jerusalem in 2020.

Iyad Halaq, 32, was shot as he walked to his special needs school. Police said the unnamed officer thought he was carrying a weapon and opened fire when he failed to obey orders to stop.

The Jerusalem district court found that the officer "made an honest mistake".

Halaq's mother condemned the verdict as "a particular injustice".

But Israel's police commissioner and national security minister welcomed it.

Iyad Halaq's family said he was on the low-functioning end of the autism spectrum and that he had trouble communicating.

He would walk every day from his home in Jerusalem's Wadi al-Joz area to the Old City to go to a centre for children and adults with disabilities.

On the day that Halaq was killed in May 2020, officers at a border police position near the Old City suspected that he was planning to carry out an attack, the Jerusalem District Court said in its decision.

He ran away when the officers approached him and ordered him to stop, it added.

According to the court, the defendant joined the pursuit with another officer and shot Halaq in the leg after he entered an alley and tried to hide in a rubbish storage room.

The defendant shot Halaq in the chest after he got up and pointed towards his female school counsellor, who was trying to protect him, the court said.

The indictment alleged that the defendant "fired at [Halaq's] upper body, thereby taking an unreasonable risk of causing his death", even though Halaq was wounded, had nothing in his hands, and had done nothing to justify it.

But the court accepted the defendant's claim that he was acting in self-defence.

He made "an honest mistake [believing] he was faced with an armed terrorist" and "did not know [Halaq] was an innocent man with special needs", it said.

Following the verdict, Halaq's mother Rana told the AFP news agency: "My son is now in the grave and his killer is relaxing and going out and having a good time."

The Palestinian foreign ministry said the acquittal was "further evidence that the Israeli judicial system is part of the occupation system".

Israel Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai - who was commander of the border police force at the time - said the killing of Halaq was "unfortunate" but that he believed the court's decision was "correct".

In a separate development on Thursday, an Israeli soldier, Staff Sgt Shilo Yosef Amir, was shot dead by a Palestinian in an attack near the settlement of Kedumim, in the occupied West Bank, the military said.

The gunman attempted to flee the scene but was killed by other soldiers.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas praised the attack as a "response" to Israel's major two-day military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin earlier this week, during which 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed.