Ex-Fatah fighter in battle for justice after daughter killed by Israeli police

Bassam Aramin describes how his wife Salwa dissolved into tears after they learnt the official investigation into their 10-year-old daughter's death had been closed without any prosecution or explanation of how it happened. "She felt that they had killed her another time," he said.

Now Palestinian peace campaigner Mr Aramin who, like his wife, is convinced their daughter Abir was killed by a rubber bullet fired by Israeli border police, is to fight through the Israeli courts to have the investigation reopened.

Mr Aramin's daughter was killed as she walked down a busy street in Anata, on the West Bank, last January. Witnesses said the officers in a Jeep were firing as she fell.

Part of what makes the case unusual stems from the life story of Mr Aramin, a former Fatah militant who - long before his daughter's death - renounced violence and now devotes his spare time to fostering peaceful dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis. He has had the backing of a group of Israeli ex-soldier friends in the unique organisation, Combatants for Peace.

Seven of the ex-soldiers were arrested at a demonstration against the decision to close the prosecution file outside the Ministry of Justice this month. The mainly Israeli protesters brandished banners saying in Hebrew, "Bring the murderers of Abir to justice" and "There is no immunity for killers in uniform".

Also unusual is the faith of Mr Aramin, as a Palestinian, that the perpetrator of Abir's death will be identified. He said he was "angry but not surprised" that the file was closed; few of more than 800 deaths of Palestinian children in conflict since 2000 have even been investigated.

Abir was with her sister and two friends after buying chocolate at a grocery shop having just finished a maths exam. One of the friends, 12-year-old Abrar Abu Qweida said an Israeli Jeep passed them in the opposite direction and she noticed a gun protruding from the rear.

Moments later, she said, she heard a loud bang and like Abir's sister Arin, 11, hunched her shoulders in an instinctive reaction. She said that Abir fell forward. A boy who helped to take Abir into her nearby school handed the Israeli legal rights agency Yesh Din a rubber bullet he said he found under her body.

Because the prosecution has not yet released the report of its investigation to Mr Aramin's Israeli lawyer, Michael Sfard, it is not yet clear why it was closed. But the policemen are understood to have maintained their Jeep was in a position from which it was impossible to have shot Abir.

There have been clashes between school students and police, though residents have said there was no reason for the police to come to Anata that day.

But Mr Aramin was at a meeting between representatives of the local school and Nissim Edri, a Border Police commander for outer Jerusalem on 20 March in which he says Mr Edri said, "the girl who died didn't die from the fire of one of our forces in the envelope of Jerusalem. It was someone from another area because they didn't understand the mentality and the agreements we have with the representatives of the school". Mr Edri also reportedly added that outside forces would not come to Anata again.

While not legally conclusive, the remarks strongly suggest an assumption among at least some senior officers that she had been shot by border policemen.

Mr Aramin also says he had a heated conversation with the driver of the Jeep at the third reconstruction of the scene by police investigators. He says: "I said, 'Why did you kill a 10-year-old?'. He said, 'There was a demonstration'. I said there was no demonstration. He said, 'Why would we shoot if there was no demonstration'. So they were admitting they fired."

At the autopsy, the state pathologist said Abir could have been killed by a stone as well as a rubber bullet. A pathologist hired by the family said a stone was theoretically possible, but a rubber bullet was more likely.

Abrar Abu Qweida said in January stones had been thrown by boys from the bottom of the hill, towards which the girls was facing. But Abir's fatal wound was in the back of her head.

Avichai Sharon, one of the Israelis arrested in this month's demo, said closure of the case follows a near-uniform pattern in cases with Palestinian victims, and he is adamant that if the case was a simple criminal one a prosecution would have followed.

Even without pathological evidence, he says: "You have the testimonies of seven witnesses, you have a bullet found at the scene. If this had been a Jewish girl going home from school in a Jerusalem suburb would the investigation have looked the same?."

He contrasts the much more publicised case of Tair Rhada, 13-year-old Jewish girl murdered in the Golan heights at about the same time. Under pressure of public opinion and despite heavily contested evidence, police swiftly prosecuted. "This is an example of how there is a difference between blood and blood."

Mr Aramin, who began to think about the meaning of the Holocaust after seeing Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, says he is more determined than ever to keep up dialogue with Israelis, including the remarkable Israeli-Palestinian bereaved families group which he has joined since Abir's death. The group includes the Jewish parents of suicide bombing victims. "We have to do all we can to protect the children in this conflict," he says.

Mr Sfard will decide on what grounds to appeal when he gets the investigators' file, probably next week. Another Palestinian witness, a former employee of the Israeli police who drove past the incident as Abir fell, came forward after seeing Mrs Aramin in tears on television. His evidence is thought to corroborate other Palestinian testimonies.

Mr Aramin is adamant that he wants justice and not revenge, and is determined to go all the way to Israeli Supreme Court. "I have to prove my daughter was killed," he says quietly. "That is my problem."