The State Prosecutor's Office will apparently inform a court on Tuesday that it is retracting an indictment for "an act of recklessness and negligence" filed three years ago against a former officer and another former soldier in the 71st Battalion of the Armored Corps.
The indictment was filed following an incident in 2013 when an Arab was shot by the two and eventually died after he tried to sabotage and break the separation fence in the area of the village of Budrus near Ramallah. The two claimed that they acted in accordance with the open-fire regulations that were in effect in the area in which the incident took place, and that investigations opened in similar cases did not lead to the filing of indictments. The State Prosecutor's decision is the demand of defense attorneys to present all the legal opinions formulated in the Military Advocate General's Office over the past decade, which led to the closing of files without indictments in similar cases resulting in the killing of Arabs by IDF soldiers.