Tel Aviv
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that the recent police killing of an autistic Palestinian man was unjustified and a “tragedy”, offering his condolences to the bereaved family. Israeli police shot 32-year-old Iyak Hallak in Jerusalem on May 30 while he was walking to his special needs school, after officers mistakenly thought he was armed. “What happened with Iyad Hallak is a tragedy. This is a man with limitations — autism — who was under suspicion, we know, wrongly, of being a terrorist in a very sensitive location,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting. The killing happened near Lions’ Gate in the alleys of the walled Old City, where Hallak had attended school for six years. “We all offer our condolences to the family. I think this is shared by the entire Israeli public, as well as the entire Israeli government,” Netanyahu said.–AFP
