Police detained a resident of the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar on Sunday on suspicion of shooting dead a Palestinian teenager in May.
The suspect, 37, was detained for questioning by detectives from the Judea and Samaria central unit. He is suspected of shooting 16-yearold Aysar Yesser al-Zaben near Route 60 on May 13 during a confrontation.
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The suspect, who is works as a security guard manning the entrance to Yitzhar, told police during questioning that stones were thrown at his vehicle but denied shooting the teenager, a police source told The Jerusalem Post.
“We took his statement, and we took the weapon he uses to guard Yitzhar with for forensic analysis,” the source added.
Police say Zaben was shot with a long-barrelled firearm, and forensic officers will compare samples taken from the shooting scene with the long-barrelled gun taken on Sunday for analysis.
“All day, a deceitful message was plastered all over the media saying that this man was arrested, when he was in fact detained,” said Avraham Binyamin, a Yitzhar spokesman.
“He was unarmed during the time of the incident, and his only access to a firearm was when he was on guard duty. When he wasn’t on duty, he had no firearm. The Arabs claim the teenager was killed, but the IDF can’t say how the teenager died – all of this is based on rumors.”
Police later released the suspect, saying that he wasn’t required to be in custody for the investigation to continue. The police source said added that the next step is to complete a comparison between forensic evidence taken from the scene and the suspect’s firearm.