Ref: 99/2021

Date: 24 July 2021

Time: 09:00 GMT

At noon on Friday, 23 July 2021, unknown persons shot dead a former military prosecutor in Deir al-Ghosoun village, north of Tulkarm, and ran away.  The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns this crime and stresses the importance of opening a serious investigation into the incident, publish the results and take all the necessary legal proceedings.

According to PCHR’s investigations, two unknown persons opened fire inside a house belonging to ‘Ekramah ‘Abdel Rahman Soliman Muhanna (44), a former military prosecutor and formerly served as the legal advisor to the Palestinian Security Services (PSS), in Deir al-Ghosoun village, north of Tulkarm.  As a result, he was shot in his head at point-blank range and then taken dead to Dr. Thabet Thabet Hospital in Tulkarm.

The victim’s wife said that 2 persons came to visit her husband, who asked her to make coffee; shortly, she heard gunshots in the house and hurried to see her husband on the ground covered with his blood.  It should be noted that the house is surrounded with surveillance cameras, which were stolen by the perpetrators.

Loay Izreiqat, Spokesperson of the Palestinian Police, said that the Public Prosecution has initiated the investigation and search procedures and ordered to keep the dead body in custody in order to refer it to the Forensic Medicine Institute for autopsy and identifying the death cause.

PCHR condemns this crime and is deeply concerned over the ongoing occurrence of incidents of proliferation of weapons that threatens the right to life, rule of law and Palestinian civil peace.  PCHR calls upon the Palestinian Authority to take all the serious measures to put an end to the state of proliferation of weapons, including promptly imposing the rule of law, in order to maintain civil peace in light of the lately spiking homicides.