Hebrew newspaper M’areev reported, on Wednesday, that Israeli police have released the three settlers accused of torturing and burning to death Palestinian teen Muhammad Abu Khdeir.
According to Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency, six Israeli settlers were arrested following last week’s abduction of the boy from Sho’fat refugee camp, in occupied East Jerusalem, and the later discovery of his body, which bore signs of torture and indications that he was still alive while being burned.
The killers admitted their crime, and re-enacted it for the police.
They said that they had been searching for any Palestinian child, out of revenge for the death of three Israeli settlers who went missing more than two weeks preceeding, and whose bodies were reportedly uncovered two days earlier near the site they were reported missing.
Just prior to the incident, Israeli forces gunned down two Palestinian teens during crowd dispersals at a Nakba Day solidarity protest, raising various token comments from officials within the international community. Israeli forces consistently denied that live ammunition was employed during the incident, but foresnsic reports revealed otherwise.
Next to nothing has been said of the incident since it happened.
The settlers behind Abu Khdeir’s brutal murder were placed under house arrest, according to M’areev.
This past Sunday, an Israeli court also sentenced to house arrest Palestinian-American teenager and cousin to Muhammad, Tariq Abu Khdeir, who was filmed being brutally beaten by police during clashes in Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, Al Ray reports that over 500 Palestinians are still being held in Israeli jails – mostly without charge, for murder or anything else – after being rounded up during the massive arrest campaign which ensued in the region, following the disappeaance of the settlers.
Israel, in the last week of June, named two suspects in connection with the disappearance, Marwan al-Qawasmeh, 29, and Amer Abu Eisha, 33, going to far as to demolish their family houses.
Al Ray notes that if confessed murderers are suitable for release to house arrest, then, surely so too must be the 500+ Palestinians who have not committed or been charged with any crime at all.
