Father of Mohammed al-Dura said Israeli report is false, calls for an international investigation over death of son.
By KHALED ABU TOAMEHMuhammad al-Dura mural 390(photo credit: REUTERS)
Muhammad al-Dura’s father, Jamal, said on Monday that he was ready to have the remains of his son exhumed “to prove that he was killed by Israeli soldiers’ bullets.”The 50-year-old father of 10 dismissed as “lies and fabrications” the findings of the government report, claiming Israel was seeking to “whitewash” its image in front of the world.Israel, he charged in a phone interview, “wants to bury the truth.”“If the Israeli army did not open fire, then who wounded me with bullets?” the father asked.“In the past, Israel acknowledged responsibility for the shooting. Why are they now denying? If my son is still alive, who is lying inside his grave?”The report’s main author, Strategic Affairs Ministry director-general Brig.- Gen. (res) Yossi Kuperwaser, said Monday that “if someone wants to exhume the body from the grave for inspection, we are not opposed, but this could have been done in the last 13 years.”The father, who lives in the El-Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, said he was prepared to cooperate with any international medical team to prove that his son was killed by the IDF.He said that Israel’s “obsession” with the case of his son was “self-indicting.”The father also criticized the Palestinian Authority and Hamas for failing to help him and his family.Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.
