Israeli soldier sentenced to 18 months for killing injured Palestinian attacker

Elor Azaria’s legal team to appeal against sentence after trial that
exposed deep divisions between military and rightwing nationalists

Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem
Tuesday 21 February 2017 11.34 GMT

An Israeli military medic who was captured on camera killing an incapacitated Palestinian attacker last year has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Elor Azaria’s sentence was imposed by a panel of three judges sitting in a military court in Tel Aviv. Prosecutors had demanded a sentence of between three and five years, while Azaria himself had asked the court to be “merciful” and sentence him to open detention.

The shooting on 24 March last year, captured on video by a Palestinian human rights activist, showed Azaria, 21, killing the badly wounded and immobile Abdul Fatah al-Sharif.

Presiding judge Maya Heller said the judges had found that Azaria’s actions had seriously harmed the values of Israeli society as a whole, as well as violating the “purity of arms” of the Israeli military’s ethical code.

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