"The picture emerging from the indictment as formulated is that the utter prohibition on shooting a shackled individual has not been instilled and has not been internalized. The soldier did not view an order to shoot, if he received one, as a blatantly illegal order. The commander did not understand the illegality in the threat to shoot a person in shackles. The battalion commander said - according to the indictment - in order to frighten the Palestinian: "What do you say? Shall we take him aside and shoot him?" and the soldier replied: "I have no problem shooting rubber [bullets] at him."
The commander said: "Insert a bullet," and the soldier said, "I have one in the barrel," and fired. Only after the soldier had fired did his commander clarify to him that "one doesn't shoot a person who is tied up."
No comments:
Post a Comment