Jerusalem24 – Israeli authorities will hand over the body of 21-year-old Mohammad Shaham, whom soldiers shot at point-blank range in the head after entering his home “by mistake” on 15 August in Kafr Aqab northwest of occupied East Jerusalem.
Israeli authorities have been withholding his body since, as they routinely do when they accuse a Palestinian of having been involved in an attack or attempted attack – even though the soldiers who shot Al-Shaham told his parents immediately after the shooting that they had entered the wrong house.
Jerusalemite lawyer Medhat Diba said Israeli authorities would hand over the body of AlShaham at 11.30pm on Thursday night via the Qalandia checkpoint which separates occupied East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. The transfer will happen in the presence of lawyers, the family representative, and Al-Shaham’s father.
A funeral procession is expected to take place after the Al-Shaham family receives their son’s remains later tonight.
“We mistakenly shot him”
According to Al-Shaham’s mother, one of the Israeli soldiers who stormed the family’s home told her that they killed Al-Shaham “by mistake”: ‘We mistakenly entered this house, we mistakenly shot him,’” the mother related to Al Jazeera on the day of his killing.
An autopsy examination at the Abu Kabir Institute in Jerusalem in the presence of a Palestinian doctor and representative for the Al-Shaham family, Ashraf Al-Qadi, on 24 August, found that Al-Shaham died after he was shot point-blank in the head and left to bleed for at least 20 minutes, according to his parents.
The results also showed that Al-Shaham was hit by a second bullet that penetrated his chest, heart, kidneys, and spleen, and exited from the left flank. A third bullet penetrated his right side.
Preliminary results concluded that the cause of death was due to a heart injury, severe bleeding, and a large laceration in his skull.
