Israel's state attorney rejects appeal to reopen case of Palestinian girl killed in clash

Israel's state attorney on Tuesday rejected an appeal by a human rights group to reopen the case of a Palestinian girl killed during clashes with Israeli police last year, the Justice Ministry said.

Ten-year-old Abir Aramin was critically wounded in January 2007 when she was caught between Palestinian students throwing rocks and Israeli border police firing rubber bullets in the refugee camp of Anata, on the outskirts of Jerusalem. She died two days later in a Jerusalem hospital.

Her death became a cause for human rights groups and activists, blaming Israeli police and using the case as an example of the tactics Israeli forces use in Palestinian areas. Israeli officials rejected that version.

The Israeli state attorney closed the case last July, citing lack of evidence. On Tuesday, he rejected the appeal on the same grounds, backing the finding that the girl was not killed by police.

The girl's father, Bassam Aramin, told The Associated Press that he will continue fighting to reopen the investigation. "We won't give up," Aramin said. "We will go to the Israeli Supreme Court before we head to the international court."

Aramin is a former Palestinian militant who now works with Combatants for Peace, a group of ex-militants and Israeli soldiers promoting coexistence.

The girl's family and rights groups insist Abir was killed by rubber bullets fired by the police officers, but doctors who treated her at the time said she sustained wounds consistent with a heavy object such as a rock, and saw no evidence of her being hit by a bullet.

Natalie Rosen, an attorney for the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din that appealed the case, said pathologists hired by the appellants "did not rule out the possibility the girl was hit by a rubber bullet, but (she) could have also been hit by a rock."

The state attorney said in a statement that there was not enough evidence to reopen the case. "The head wounds sustained by the deceased were not caused by a bullet," the statement read.