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An Israeli army officer who fired the entire magazine of his
automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then said he
would have done the same even if she had been three years old was
acquitted on all charges by a military court yesterday.

The soldier, who has only been identified as “Captain R”, was charged
with relatively minor offences for the killing of Iman al-Hams who was
shot 17 times as she ventured near an Israeli army post near Rafah
refugee camp in Gaza a year ago.

The manner of Iman’s killing, and the revelation of a tape recording
in which the captain is warned that she was just a child who was
“scared to death”, made the shooting one of the most controversial
since the Palestinian intifada erupted five years ago even though
hundreds of other children have also died.

After the verdict, Iman’s father, Samir al-Hams, said the army never intended to hold the soldier accountable.

“They did not charge him with Iman’s murder, only with small
offences, and now they say he is innocent of those even though he shot
my daughter so many times,” he said. “This was the cold-blooded murder
of a girl. The soldier murdered her once and the court has murdered her
again. What is the message? They are telling their soldiers to kill
Palestinian children.”

The military court cleared the soldier of illegal use o... >>>