General to rule on ousting officer who attacked anarchists

Last update - 08:05 15/05/2007

IDF overall West Bank commander Major-General Yair Naveh will open a probe this week into an incident in which a reserve captain was filmed kicking and shoving anarchist demonstrators, jabbing one of them violently in the chest with the muzzle of his loaded assault rifle.

The commander of the Hebron Brigade, Colonel Yehuda Fuchs, has already announced his recommendation that the company commander be ousted.

An army inquiry into the incident has concluded that “professional errors” led to an incident last week in which reservists assaulted members of the Anarchists Against the Wall group after the demonstrators destroyed a roadblock near the West Bank town of Dahariya.

The inquiry, conducted Monday, was headed by Brigadier General Yair Golan, commander of the IDF forces in the West Bank. In addition to investigating the incident itself, the probe focused on how familiar soldiers at all levels of the IDF - company, battalion, brigade and division - were with the procedures for dispersing demonstrators.

The commander of the reservist company responsible, who continues to deny that he was to blame for the incident, has said that he was unfamiliar with some of these procedures and had never been given an orderly briefing on the subject.

Monday’s inquiry did not focus on the personal responsibility of those involved.

On Monday night, Fuchs met with the reservist company’s soldiers and officers, including the commander, to discuss the incident and the public storm it aroused. The soldiers have strongly backed their commander, saying he did the best he could under difficult circumstances, and decried the army’s refusal to support them.