Human rights organizations demand the publication of the report on the circumstances of the killing of the activist Banat
His family confirmed that their members were not contacted by any official side
Jerusalem24 – Human rights organizations demanded the publication of the report prepared by the government committee in charge of investigating the killing of activist Nizar Banat, while Banat’s family rejected the report’s findings, stressing that the committee did not meet with any of the family members.
The Independent Commission for Human Rights, the Board of Grievances, called on the Minister of Justice and the head of the committee to publish the results of the investigation committee set up by the government into the killing of girls to the public. Dr. Ammar Dweik, director general of the commission, said, “we in the independent commission demand the Minister of Justice as he promised that the investigation will be transparent, and we demand that the report be published to the public because the Nizar Banat case is a public opinion issue and concerns the Palestinian public opinion.” He added, “we expected, at a minimum, to publish the results of the investigation, and we in the independent body will continue our investigations into the case independently, and publish the results to the public.”
For his part, Issam Al-Hajj Hussein, Executive Director of the Coalition for Integrity and Accountability, “Aman”, considered that what the Minister of Justice announced, in the case of the killing of the activist Banat, was disappointing.
In a press statement, he said, “we are waiting for the government’s statement, as this committee was formed by Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh, and therefore (the Prime Minister) promised that he would deal fully in terms of transparency and integrity with this case and with the investigation, and this means that there is a duty for him to publish the report directly, and putting the citizens in the steps that will be taken to directly implement the recommendations.” He continued, “we hope that we will not be surprised that the recommendations of the committee will allow impunity.”
Banat’s family said that the report of the government investigation committee was “misleading”, and that its claim that it had heard witnesses from the family was “incorrect and did not happen.” Ghassan Banat, Nizar’s brother, said in a press statement, “the minister’s statement is not true, and we challenge whether the committee sat with any member of our family for even one second. He added, “the committee formed by the Shtayyeh government to investigate the assassination of his brother Nizar was stillborn, and all its results are rejected.” He also said, “we are not concerned with the results of the committee, from which everyone withdrew and lost three of its components, led by the family doctor, who announced his withdrawal through a press conference, in addition to the withdrawal of the representative of the Independent Commission for Human Rights and the Bar Association.”
He added, “those who remained on the committee are the two government parties, Minister of Justice Muhammad al-Shalaldeh, and the other is a representative of the security “intelligence”, and the security is the accused in this case.”
He continued, “Al-Shalaldeh began his speech with the sentence of Nizar Banat’s death, and this contradicts the truth and the facts and the preliminary autopsy report of the forensic medicine, which confirmed that what happened with Nizar is not a natural death, but rather an assassination, execution and heinous representation of the corpse of Nizar Banat.”
