Abu Rahmah lays on the ground after he was shot. Villagers did not have an ambulance present that day. Lazar Simeonov

Abu Rahmah was shot in the chest with an extended-range tear gas canister from about 20 yards; the canisters have a range of 500 yards. The entire incident was caught on video camera. Lazar Simeonov

A dramatic series of photos shows Abu Rahmah being struck by a tear gas canister believed to have been fired by an Israeli soldier in April 2009. At the time he was hit, he was yelling at soldiers to stop shooting, because he saw activists trapped in a cloud of tear gas. Lazar Simeonov

Abu Rahmah, right, could often be seen at the front of the protest, sometimes trying to start conversations in Hebrew with Israeli soldiers across the wall. Lazar Simeonov

Bassem Abu Rahmah was a non-violent protester against the Israeli presence in and around his West Bank village. Here, he is pictured in 2009 at the front of a protest march just weeks before his death. Lazar Simeonov

Israel’s military said Wednesday that investigators have closed a probe into the April 2009 death of a non-violent Palestinian protester in the West Bank, citing a lack of evidence of wrongdoing. The news drew outrage from Israeli rights groups and the man’s family.

An Israeli border policeman shot Bassem Abu Rahmah in the chest with an extended-range tear gas canister from a distance of around 75 feet. Several videos show him being fatally wounded as he was peacefully protesting Israel’s annexation of his village’s land in the West Bank village of Bil’in.

“It’s very painful news to hear. We didn’t expect the investigation to be dropped because of a lack of evidence,” the protester’s brother, Ahmed Abu Rahmah, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.

He said his brother’s death was captured on several separate video cameras, and some of the footage was featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Five Broken Cameras.”

“My family, and the entire village, was upset and disappointed by the announcement. But it shows the world that this court is not fair to the Palestinians,” he said.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper on Tuesday cited Israeli rights group B’Tselem as saying the investigation was dropped due to lack of evidence, and Israeli officials confirmed the news in an emailed reply to Al Jazeera’s questions.

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) spokesman’s office said that there was not sufficient evidence to take legal action against any soldiers, or that official military protocol was violated in any way.

B’Tselem criticized the decision to drop the investigation, arguing that the videos made during the demonstration prove that Abu Rahmah was standing on the village’s side of the wall, did not act violently and was not endangering Israeli soldiers in any way -- which would make the killing a criminal offense.

The rights group has said the video footage documenting the incident was analyzed by international experts who determined that the tear gas canister was aimed directly at Abu Rahmah.

B'Tselem said in a press release that their efforts to discover the truth about Abu Rahmah’s death have been “repeatedly thwarted by the sluggish conduct of the [Israeli authorities] … The foot-dragging and procrastination in the case have continued even once the investigation was launched over three years ago.”