Bassam Aramin with a picture of his daughter Abir, killed by a rubber bullet that witnesses say was shot by Israeli border police

Bassam Aramin's search for justice

Donald Macintyre meets the man who won his fight to prove the Israeli army shot his daughter

Wednesday, 18 August 2010

On a hot August afternoon exactly three years ago Bassam Aramin was adamant that he did not want revenge for the death of his ten-year-old daughter, Abir, but justice. At the time, he added quietly: "I have to prove my daughter was killed: that is my problem."

Yesterday he had the satisfaction of knowing that his three-year fight to do just that had been vindicated by a judge's ruling that Abir Aramin had indeed been shot dead by a border policeman with a rubber bullet, that the killing was "totally unjustifiable" and that the state should pay her family compensation.

It had not been easy. Abir, described by teachers as a "lovely" model student, was fatally wounded in January 2007 as she walked down the street with her sister and two friends after buying sweets in a shop across the road from her school in the West Bank village of Anata at the end of a maths exam.

The dead girl's father spoke eight months later to The Independent after learning that police investigators had closed the file on his daughter's death without attributing blame for it.

He described how his wife, Salwa – who, like him, was always convinced she had been killed by a police rubber bullet – had broken down in tears when she heard that there was to be no prosecution, feeling "that they had killed her another time".

Then, when he and the Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din contested the police decision in the High Court, it refused to re-open the case on the grounds that she could have been killed by a stone thrown by Palestinian rioters.

The family's subsequent civil suit succeeded this week when Jerusalem District Judge Orit Efal-Gabai declared unequivocally in open court: "Abir and her friends were walking down a street where there were no rock-throwers, therefore there was no reason to shoot in their direction.

"It is clear that Abir's death, caused by a rubber bullet shot by border guards, was due to negligence..."

Quietly spoken as ever, Mr Aramin said yesterday that his wife had cried again when she heard the news of Monday's ruling, but this time from relief that the truth had been established at last. He said that his court victory was "historic" and was "a really very important message: don't give up. If you believe in justice, even under the occupation, don't give up for one second".

Mr Aramin's determination to pursue every avenue, whatever the obstacles, in the Israeli legal system is at one with a personal philosophy forged by an unusual life story. A one-time Fatah militant who was gaoled for seven years for an attack on an Israeli Army jeep, Mr Aramin renounced violence and ....READ MORE