Thursday, August 19, 2010

Bassam Aramin's search for justice

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.

No comments: