Rights groups praise Turkel report
02/07/2013 02:53
Yesh Din to PM: commission accepted claims of fundamental defects in IDF Investigations; recommendations should be implemented.
Activists pose on Mavi Marmara Photo: Reuters
Human rights groups B’Tselem and Yesh Din on Wednesday praised the Turkel
Commission Report part two on its recommendations for “substantive change in the
Israeli military’s investigative apparatus.”
A statement released by
B’Tselem said that the “commission’s fundamental decisions regarding the issue
of what matters should be investigated, by whom and who should be the target of
investigations, as well as its decisions with regard to the way investigations
are conducted can all lead to a significant improvement in law enforcement in
cases of soldiers who have harmed Palestinians.”
Yesh Din’s Michael Sfard
and Emily Schaeffer said the commission “accepted many of Yesh Din’s claims of
fundamental defects and failures in IDF investigations.”
“The
commission’s recommendations concern basic and central demands of international
law, which indicates that the current situation is far from meeting
international standards,” Sfard said.
At the same time, Yesh Din
“expressed surprise over the gap between the strongly worded recommendations”
and the report’s general conclusion that Israel’s investigations were generally
consistent with Israel’s obligations under international law.
On that
issue, B’Tselem said that its perspective was “forward looking,” and that it
planned to “use the report as a working document” to hold the state accountable
and ensure that a year from now the recommendations had “actually been
implemented.”
B’Tselem called on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to
adopt the conclusions of “the commission he appointed and implement them.” It
said that the commission accepted its position that an “operational inquiry is
not suitable as a basis for deciding whether or not the Military Police
Investigation Unit should investigate an incident.”
B’Tselem also said
that the commission accepted its position that an “obligatory time frame must be
fixed in order to prevent the procrastination and delay prevailing among
military law enforcement authorities.”
Next, it said that the commission
agreed with B’Tselem’s contention that in the West Bank, “an investigation
should be begun immediately not only in cases of civilian fatalities, but also
in cases of serious injuries to civilians.”
B’Tselem said that at the end
of the day, the important thing was to avoid what had happened in the past with
other reports, with a “long series