Rage in Jordan grows over judge’s killing

[Jefferson23]

Eyewitness describes skirmish with soldiers that resulted in shooting.

By Jack Khoury | Mar. 13, 2014 | 3:40 AM


Palestinian human rights groups have started collecting as many eyewitnesses as possible regarding the incident in which a Jordanian judge was shot to death on the Israeli side of the Allenby Bridge crossing Monday.

The circumstances of the fatal shooting remain unclear.

According to testimony by a Palestinian woman from Hebron who was on the bus, obtained by Haaretz, the bus crossed the border or the river and arrived at the Israeli checkpoint. According to procedures, all the passengers alight from the bus and leave their belongings on it, and then a soldier gets on and makes a preliminary check.

At this point the woman took her children to the adjacent bathroom and returned after a few minutes. She said she saw the judge smoking a cigarette. According to her a soldier asked him to get back on the bus saying they were running late, but he insisted on finishing his cigarette. The soldier asked him again and he refused again. An argument broke out when the soldier pushed him to get on the bus. He then pushed the soldier, and the soldier pushed him back. Another soldier at the position pulled out his weapon and pointed it at the judge, and a fight broke out between the two of them. Then one of the soldiers pushed him to the ground and shot three bullets at him, two of which hit him, she said.

Mohammed Zayad, a resident of Kalkilya who was also on the bus, also attested in a conversation with Haaretz that the judge was sprawled on the ground and no one hurried to assist him.“There was a big eruption in the place. The judge’s body was lying on the asphalt for several minutes until a Magen David Adom team arrived and pronounced him dead, and his body was covered,” he said.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.579537

[sabbat hunter]

1. something is not right here

with the story.

Why would you refuse to put out your cigarette when the man with the gun tells you to do so?

Other stories say he lunged at the soldiers and tried to grab a weapon from them and that he had been under a lot of stress lately.



http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-03-10/israel-troops-kill-jordanian-judge-at-crossing-into-west-bank

The military said the man, 38-year-old Raed Zeiter, lunged toward the Allenby Bridge terminal yelling Allahu Akbar, or God is Great, and tried to wrest a weapon from an Israeli soldier. Soldiers opened fire at his legs to try to restrain him, at which point he tried to strangle a soldier and was shot to death, the military said. The crossing is under overall Israeli security control.

Jordan’s Ro’ya TV said Zeiter’s family didn’t know he was going to the West Bank. They cited his father, Alaa, as saying Zeiter had been under stress because his young son had been hospitalized.

The truth probably is a combination of the two stories.

[Jefferson23]

2. How exactly the situation escalated has yet to be sorted out, true.

How one attempts to strangle anyone after being shot makes no sense to me.

[azurnoir]

3. something is quite strange here

there are claims from IDF that he grabbed for a soldiers gun (justifying the shooting) and then after being shot continued to attack the soldiers apparently and/or with an "iron bar" and attempted 'strangulation', depending on which Israeli version you read-also the security camera's malfunctioned so there is no video record of the incident

http://www.democraticunderground.com/113459216

[Jefferson23]

4. Yea, it is not clear. I remarked in post#2, makes no sense to me how anyone

could attempt to strangle someone after being shot.

Cameras can malfunction, but then you have to depend on your reputation in order
for people to believe you.

[Jefferson23]

5. Analysis: Allenby killing highlights need for serious change

By Daoud Kuttab

Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist and former professor of journalism at Princeton University.

For 46 years the bridge connecting the West Bank with Jordan has been a source of hardships, humiliations and extremely long and unnecessary delays, not to mention cumbersome and exaggerated body and baggage searches.

This nightmare has to end.

What happened on March 10 is a symptom of the occupation versus occupied paradigm that must come to an end.

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=681310

[Jefferson23]

6. Thousands Protest Israel in Jordan Over Killing

March 14, 2014

Protesters fought with riot police Friday outside of the Israeli Embassy in Jordan, as some 2,000 demonstrators called on the kingdom to end its peace treaty with the country over the killing of a Jordanian judge.

The death of Raed Zueter, a Jordanian magistrate of Palestinian descent, has caused an uproar in Jordan, triggering street protests and calls in parliament to annul the 1994 peace agreement with Israel. The Israeli military said that guards shot Zueter on Monday after he tried to grab a rifle from a soldier at the border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan.

Jordanian officials say Israel later apologized. Israel has shared the results of its preliminary investigation with Jordan, and agreed to a Jordanian request to establish a joint investigation into Zueter's killing.

Some of the protesters organized by Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood shoved against riot police lines Friday, trying to attack the Israeli Embassy in Amman, Jordan's capital. Police officers carrying shields and batons chased some protesters in the streets. Demonstrators also burned an Israeli flag and carried a mock coffin for Zueter.

"We will not accept less than the annulment of the peace treaty and deportation the Israeli ambassador and to announce that Jews are enemies for our nation," Hammam Saeed, the general secretary of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, told The Associated Press. "We demand a strong reaction, not only useless talking."

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/thousands-protest-israel-jordan-killing-22910982