The Military Advocate General in Israel stated on Tuesday that the soldiers who left a Palestinian-American elderly man outside overnight after arresting him, and who was later found dead, will not face criminal prosecution but will undergo disciplinary actions.
Omar Assad, 78, was detained by Israeli forces at a temporary checkpoint in his hometown of Jaljulia in the West Bank last January. The soldiers left him lying down, showing no signs of response at a construction site, believing he had fallen asleep. He was found in the early hours of the morning, already deceased, with a plastic tie around his wrist.
The army claimed that Assad loudly and insistently resisted the soldiers' attempts to lead him from his vehicle to the security checkpoint. Due to his refusal to cooperate, the soldiers temporarily gagged him with a piece of cloth and restrained his hands with a plastic tie.
After an initial investigation, the army dismissed two officers and reprimanded the battalion commander regarding Assad's death, which was attributed to a "moral failure and a decision-making disorder."
The army's legal body stated that its decision was made "following hearings and a thorough review of the investigative materials, which showed no causal link between the soldiers' misconduct and the death."
A Palestinian autopsy concluded that Assad, who had heart issues, suffered a heart attack as a result of stress. Palestinian officials attributed this to the mistreatment he received from Israeli soldiers.
Palestinian leaders have called for the prosecution of the involved soldiers in an international court. A report from the Israeli human rights organization "Yesh Din," based on military data from 2017 to 2021, concluded that less than one percent of hundreds of complaints against Israeli soldiers for crimes against Palestinians led to prosecution. The organization noted that even in the rare cases where soldiers were convicted of harming Palestinians, military courts imposed very lenient sentences, demonstrating "the military law enforcement system's failure to take appropriate action regarding crimes committed by soldiers against Palestinians."
