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Investigation into police shooting in Umm al-Hiran, Israel

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Forensic Architecture investigated the shooting of a man whose car subsequently ran over and killed an Israeli policeman in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran. In 2017, Israel’s government had organised the eviction and demolition of the village to make way for a new Jewish settlement. Image credit - יובל עופר - יובל עופר licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Police raided the village at dawn on 18 January. Using official footage from a police helicopter and video from activists on the scene, Forensic Architecture reconstructed the events. Image credit - Forensic Architecture
The original version of events from the Israeli police stated that the villager conducted a terror attack by accelerating his car towards the police officers. Image credit - Forensic Architecture
The autopsy of the driver revealed that he had been shot in the leg by the police officer on the far right of this image, which probably caused him to release the brake pedal. A model of the car’s trajectory under such a situation showed that this would have caused the car to accelerate downhill and cast doubt on the likelihood that the driver had accelerated deliberately. Image credit - Forensic Architecture
In a reconstruction at the scene with the help of eyewitnesses, Forensic Architecture confirmed the version of events predicted by their model. Image credit - Forensic Architecture