An Israeli court on Thursday acquitted a police officer of killing an unarmed autistic Palestinian in the Old City of Jerusalem.
The autistic Palestinian youth, Iyad Hallaq, 32, was shot dead in May 2020 when he was on his way to a school for people with special needs in occupied East Jerusalem, after officers mistook him for an armed attacker.
The Jerusalem District Court declared that the accused was “acquitted” of “reckless murder.”
The court found that the officer being tried “mistakenly believed that he was dealing with an armed terrorist who posed a real danger,” noting that the officer had expressed “regret” for this mistake.
In its decision, the court stated that Hallaq aroused the suspicion of the officers when he approached a border guard post near the Old City of Jerusalem.
She added that the officers approached Iyad Hallaq and shouted at him to stop, which prompted him to flee. The defendant officer joined in pursuit while another shot him in the leg.
Hallak then stood up and pointed towards a woman he knew who had approached the site, prompting the officer to fire a bullet in the chest that killed him.
Hallaq’s family had said that his mental age was eight years, while eyewitnesses said that Hallaq panicked after the officers shouted at him.
The officer was charged in June 2021, and the Ministry of Justice had announced months earlier that he had not followed the police rules of shooting, and that Hallaq “did not pose any danger to the police or civilians at the site.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas described Hallaq’s killing as a “war crime” and an “execution”, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described his death as a “tragedy”.