Family of Muslim student killed at Al-Aqsa rejects police claims

Hura, Israel (AFP):

The family of a Muslim student shot dead by police at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound rejected on Sunday claims by the force that he grabbed and fired an officer’s gun.

Medical student Mohammed al-Asibi was killed late Friday, hours after worshipers marking the Muslim holy month of Ramadan held prayers at the sacred site.

Israeli police said the 26-year-old “managed to take the gun (from an officer) and fire two bullets” before being shot dead by officers. They claimed Sunday that Asibi’s DNA was found “on the (loading) slide and handle of the pistol”.

As mourners gathered Sunday in Asibi’s Bedouin village of Hura, in southern Israel, his family said he had travelled to Jerusalem only to pray.

“We reject the police’s story, which is false and slanderous,” said one of his sisters, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation.

She described her brother as a “polite and well-mannered person who loved helping others and (had) a peaceful personality”.

Raam, the Israeli parliament’s Islamist party, noted in a Facebook post claims from “witnesses” who said Asibi had gone to the aid of a woman who was in a scuffle with police.

Asibi was reaching the end of his medical studies in Romania and had just renewed his residency visa ahead of his final exam, his family said.

Relatives told AFP that police raided their home after the shooting, interrogated his parents and seized Asibi’s personal belongings.

The head of Hura’s municipal council, Habis al-Atawneh, said his community “all believe that the young man was executed.”

No footage of shooting

Doubts have been raised over the shooting in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, particularly because police said there was no footage of the shooting at the heavily-surveilled compound.

A police spokesman told AFP on Sunday that the incident happened in a surveillance camera blind spot, while the officer whose weapon was grabbed by Asibi did not have time to turn on his body camera.

Police rejected the notion of a woman being involved, saying Asibi was at the mosque compound alone and therefore “aroused suspicion”.

The compound in Jerusalem’s Old City is the most sacred site for Jews and the third-holiest place for Muslims.

Waleed Alhwashla, from Raam, was among Arab lawmakers attending Asibi’s funeral on Sunday.

He said parliamentarians were in touch with foreign diplomats to “internationalise the issue of the Arabs of the Negev (in southern Israel) and the issue of the martyr Mohammed.”

Asibi’s Bedouin community is part of Israel’s Arab minority, which makes up around 20 percent of the population and many of whom identify as Palestinian.

Businesses in the village shut Sunday as residents went on strike to protest Asibi’s killing, an action also observed in other Arab-Israeli communities, according to local media.

Asibi is one of more than a hundred people killed so far this year in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In addition to him, the conflict has claimed the lives of 88 Palestinians, since the start of the year.

Separately, fourteen Israelis and one Ukrainian have been killed over the same period, according to an AFP tally based on official sources from both sides.