Defense minister: ‘No pardon’ for Hebron shooter soldier Azaria

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman says he opposes a military pardon for Hebron shooting soldier Elor Azaria, sentenced last month to 18 months in prison by the Jaffa Military Court.

Azaria shot and killed Palestinian Abdel Fattah al-Sharif last March, a few minutes after Sharif had stabbed an IDF soldier from Azaria’s unit and was lying wounded on the ground.

The court ruled that Azaria had violated military rules of engagement and convicted him of manslaughter.

“First of all, no pardon,” Liberman tells the Ynet news site, apparently contradicting calls from many right-wing politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to grant Azaria such a pardon. “You can shorten [the sentence], but only after a sentence is given, 16 days from its announcement,” Liberman says.

The defense minister says he opposes a pardon once a court issues a conviction and sentence for manslaughter for an IDF soldier, but suggested he would have preferred a disciplinary, rather than a criminal, process for handling the incident in the first place.

He tells Ynet: “I’ve said more than once that this whole legal track, appeal after appeal, was the wrong path, but that’s what the family decided.”

Under law, Azaria has two possible tracks for obtaining a pardon, either from the IDF chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, who has already vehemently criticized Azaria’s actions and so is considered an unlikely target for a pardon appeal, or the president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin.