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Border cop dies from self-inflicted shot at Sarkozy farewell
By Haaretz Service
Tags: Benjamin Netanyahu
A border policeman shot himself dead on Tuesday 200 meters from where French President Nicolas Sarkozy was getting ready to board a plane ending his trip to Israel.
Bodyguards that heard the shot over the music being played by a band feared it may have been an assassination attempt, and rushed Sarkozy into the plane alongside his wife Carla Bruni, who ran up the stairs ahead of her husband.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Shimon Peres, who came to bid farewell to the French president, were hurried into their bullet-proof vehicles until the origin of the gunshot could be determined.
Shin Bet security service officials immediately ran toward where they had heard the shot, and found the border policeman, who was positioned on top of a building, lying on the ground below. A Magen David Adom team could not resuscitate him and he was declared dead.
Officials soon ruled out the option that he accidentally shot himself before the fall, or that his gun misfired upon impact with the ground, and concluded that he apparently committed suicide using his M-16 rifle, causing him to fall off the building. An autopsy of the body confirmed their conclusion.
Border Police officials said the man, a member of the Druze community, had served as a border policeman for eight years since he was discharged from mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces. His family asked media not to publish his name.
The man had arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport together with other border policeman to guard the perimeter of the event.
An investigation personally headed by the police commissioner is being carried out, and the findings are expected to be drawn up in the next few days.
Netanyahu to Sarkozy: Jerusalem will never be divided
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier Tuesday during a meeting with visiting Sarkozy that Jerusalem would never be divided in a future peace agreement with the Palestinians.
"Jerusalem is the historic capital of the Jewish people. Jerusalem will not be divided, and only Israeli control in the city will guarantee freedom of worship for all religions," Netanyahu, the chairman of the right-wing Likud party, said.
Netanyahu's comments came after the French president told the Knesset on Monday that the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of both Israel and a Palestinian state was a condition for peace. The Palestinians, he said, "have the right to a viable state of their own." He added that such a state would "ensure Israel's security."
Sarkozy also met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem on Tuesday, at the end of a three-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Sarkozy is slated to get a look at a new electric car, a French-Israeli project, in an event to be hosted by President Shimon Peres.
His first presidential visit to Israel, accompanied by his wife Carla Bruni and eager photojournalists, has been marked by mutual warmth and expressions of a renaissance in Franco-Israeli relations. Much of the visit has been carried live on Israeli television, in particular a tour of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.
Sarkozy also told the Knesset that Israel must end its settlement activity in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and said that there would be "no peace without a solution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees," a key sticking point in negotiations between the two sides. The French leader also urged Israel to "encourage legislation that would entice settlers to leave the West Bank."
He also spoke strongly against the Iranian nuclear threat. "A nuclear Iran is intolerable," Sarkozy told the lawmakers. "Anyone trying to destroy Israel will find France blocking the way."
The electric powered vehicle that will be presented to Sarkozy on Tuesday is at the center of a joint venture between automotive giant Renault-Nissan, which is building the car, and Project Better Place of Israel, which came up with the business model and is supposed to operate a recharging grid to be built across Israel beginning in 2009.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/995777.html
Het kan natuurlijk ook echt een zelfmoord zijn geweest... Maar besluit hij nu juist tijdens het vertrek van Sarkozy om zich van kant te maken, met zijn M-16 noless.
Sarkozy was in elk geval geen totale suck up tijdens zijn speech in de knesset. Dus wellicht had de mossad besloten om Europese leiders een lesje te leren om zo in de knesset te praten door Sarkozy om te leggen. De soldaat was dan of de dader die zijn poging verijdelt zag, of de designated patsy.
1973Tanger
25-06-08, 16:13
Border cop dies from self-inflicted shot at Sarkozy farewell
By Haaretz Service
Tags: Benjamin Netanyahu
A border policeman shot himself dead on Tuesday 200 meters from where French President Nicolas Sarkozy was getting ready to board a plane ending his trip to Israel.
Bodyguards that heard the shot over the music being played by a band feared it may have been an assassination attempt, and rushed Sarkozy into the plane alongside his wife Carla Bruni, who ran up the stairs ahead of her husband.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Shimon Peres, who came to bid farewell to the French president, were hurried into their bullet-proof vehicles until the origin of the gunshot could be determined.
Shin Bet security service officials immediately ran toward where they had heard the shot, and found the border policeman, who was positioned on top of a building, lying on the ground below. A Magen David Adom team could not resuscitate him and he was declared dead.
Officials soon ruled out the option that he accidentally shot himself before the fall, or that his gun misfired upon impact with the ground, and concluded that he apparently committed suicide using his M-16 rifle, causing him to fall off the building. An autopsy of the body confirmed their conclusion.
Border Police officials said the man, a member of the Druze community, had served as a border policeman for eight years since he was discharged from mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces. His family asked media not to publish his name.
The man had arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport together with other border policeman to guard the perimeter of the event.
An investigation personally headed by the police commissioner is being carried out, and the findings are expected to be drawn up in the next few days.
Netanyahu to Sarkozy: Jerusalem will never be divided
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier Tuesday during a meeting with visiting Sarkozy that Jerusalem would never be divided in a future peace agreement with the Palestinians.
"Jerusalem is the historic capital of the Jewish people. Jerusalem will not be divided, and only Israeli control in the city will guarantee freedom of worship for all religions," Netanyahu, the chairman of the right-wing Likud party, said.
Netanyahu's comments came after the French president told the Knesset on Monday that the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of both Israel and a Palestinian state was a condition for peace. The Palestinians, he said, "have the right to a viable state of their own." He added that such a state would "ensure Israel's security."
Sarkozy also met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem on Tuesday, at the end of a three-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Sarkozy is slated to get a look at a new electric car, a French-Israeli project, in an event to be hosted by President Shimon Peres.
His first presidential visit to Israel, accompanied by his wife Carla Bruni and eager photojournalists, has been marked by mutual warmth and expressions of a renaissance in Franco-Israeli relations. Much of the visit has been carried live on Israeli television, in particular a tour of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.
Sarkozy also told the Knesset that Israel must end its settlement activity in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and said that there would be "no peace without a solution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees," a key sticking point in negotiations between the two sides. The French leader also urged Israel to "encourage legislation that would entice settlers to leave the West Bank."
He also spoke strongly against the Iranian nuclear threat. "A nuclear Iran is intolerable," Sarkozy told the lawmakers. "Anyone trying to destroy Israel will find France blocking the way."
The electric powered vehicle that will be presented to Sarkozy on Tuesday is at the center of a joint venture between automotive giant Renault-Nissan, which is building the car, and Project Better Place of Israel, which came up with the business model and is supposed to operate a recharging grid to be built across Israel beginning in 2009.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/995777.html
Het kan natuurlijk ook echt een zelfmoord zijn geweest... Maar besluit hij nu juist tijdens het vertrek van Sarkozy om zich van kant te maken, met zijn M-16 noless.
Sarkozy was in elk geval geen totale suck up tijdens zijn speech in de knesset. Dus wellicht had de mossad besloten om Europese leiders een lesje te leren om zo in de knesset te praten door Sarkozy om te leggen. De soldaat was dan of de dader die zijn poging verijdelt zag, of de designated patsy.
Waren zeker ook à la Slinger Noord Afrikanen?
Israeli 'suicide cop': family refute claims that he killed himself
The family of Raid Asaad Raid Ghanan, an Israeli guard who was shot in the head during the farewell ceremony for President Nicolas Sarkozy at Tel Aviv airport, refuted claims today that he committed suicide.
Mr Ghanan, 32, of the northern Druze village of Beit Jan, could not have killed himself said a family member to the local press.
"We scornfully reject the claims that our son took his own life. He was a kindhearted and happy person. He had a family and there was no reason for him to do such a horrible thing."
The officer's father, Asaad Ghanan, said he had last seen his son in good spirits. "He had a family, he had friends, he had plans for the future and had no reason to commit suicide.”
It took police representatives several hours to reach the family, who live in a remote village in Israel’s north. Naif Ghanan, the officer’s brother, said that officials who came to inform the family of the death said that the circumstances of the incident were still being investigated.
"It is unthinkable that my brother took his own life. We believe this was an accident, or even an incident in which my brother was accidentally shot by one of the security officials in the area."
Mr Ghanan’s mother, Hanna, was killed in an accident several years ago. He was survived by his father, wife, two children, three brothers and five sisters.
New details emerged of the extraordinary incident, which sent the French President, Israeli Prime Minister, and Israeli President, scrambling for cover during the farewell ceremony for the French delegation yesterday at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv.
Mr Ghanan was securing the outer perimeter of the area, positioned on a roof approximately 200 meters away from the VIP delegation. Police officials said that the initial investigation revealed that he shot himself, and then fell from the roof to the ground below.
Mickey Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said that it was in no way an assassination attempt.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article4209639.ece
Was the incident that marred Sarkozy's exit a suicide or assassination try?
Something went terribly wrong on Tuesday afternoon, at the departure ceremony for French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni, at Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel.
The band had just started up its loud farewell repertoire. Sarkozy, President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Olmert clasped hands in unity for the cameras.
Suddenly a shot was heard, or not heard, depending on where you were standing. Radios came alive and there was a flurry of activity. Bodyguards did not dive on the VIPs, but security rushed the Israeli dignitaries away to their armor plated limousines. Sarkozy's wife scurried up the stairs to the plane, her husband following behind her. If there was a threat, they would have been wide-open targets as they climbed in panic to the plane without protection.
The Israeli media dutifully reported the official account that exactly at that most opportune moment for an assassination, with the band's music covering the sound of the shot, a veteran soldier in an elite Border Guard unit, of Druse extraction, decided to kill himself. He was reportedly on a roof in line of site from the departure ceremony, 100 yards away and equipped with a rifle with a 400 yard range. Not only did he shoot himself, he fell off the roof. Not an easy feat!
From the Daily Telegraph, we learn that the border policeman shot himself in the head with his rifle, also an unnatural task. He was said to have killed himself in front of his "guarding partner," and two female soldiers, who -- the media informed Israelis -- fainted and had to be taken to the hospital. It was the first time in memory that IDF soldiers -- male or female -- were reported to have fainted.
Ynetnews reports that Shin Bet security service officials found the border policeman lying on the ground below, with his "guarding partner" huddled over the body.
According to Haaretz, "officials soon ruled out the option that he accidentally shot himself before the fall, or that his gun misfired upon impact with the ground, and concluded that he apparently committed suicide using his M-16 rifle, causing him to fall off the building. An autopsy of the body confirmed their conclusion."
The assembled media was whisked away and, remarkably, the subsequent reports were either subdued or suppressed altogether. The midnight news summary of government-owned television Channel One did not even report the incident.
So far as Israel Insider could determine, there have no subsequent reports from his "guarding partner," nor the female soldiers. There were no follow up reports to speak of. It was an "open and shut case" as far as they mainstream media in Israel were concerned.
The one discordant note came from the family of the Druze soldier who reportedly committed suicide on the job, without a note. Border Police officials said the man, a member of the Druze community, had served as a border policeman for eight years since he was discharged from mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces. The dead officer was identified as Raid Asaad Ghanan, 32, of the Druze village of Beit Jan.
The Druze, a mysterious sect that was an offshot of Islam, are Israeli citizens generally opposed the Palestinians. Within the IDF, they are known as well-disciplined and loyal soldiers. Many serve in the border guard, like Ghanan, who had completed eight years of service. While there has been some ferment in the Golan Heights among Druze who were previously Syrian citizens, and some high profile expressions of support by some Druze for anti-Israel causes, these have been the exceptions, not the rule.
As reported by ynetnews, Ghanan's relatives furiously refused to believe that he had committed suicide: "We scornfully reject the claims that our son took his own life," a family member said. "He was a kindhearted and happy person. He had a family and there was no reason for him to do such a horrible thing."
The officer's father, Asaad Ghanan, said that his son had left the house on Tuesday morning in good spirits. "He had a family, he had friends, he had plans for the future and had no reason to commit suicide," the father said.
Naif, Raid's brother, said that the police representatives who informed the family of their son's death, had told them that the circumstances of the incidents were unclear and would be probed by an investigating officer.
"It is unthinkable that my brother took his own life. We believe this was an accident, or even an incident in which my brother was accidentally shot by one of the security officials in the area."
But senior officials immediately and absolutely ruled out one possibility: "This was in no way an assassination attempt," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. "A border policeman committed suicide during the farewell ceremony."
Yet the mystery remains: a distinguished soldier with no proclivity for suicide, without leaving a note, standing at a vantage point with a long-range rifle n line of sight of the VIPs, should at the absolutely most ideal moment for an assassination at once shoot himself in the head with a rifle and somehow find a way to fall off the roof? What an odd simultaneous set of coincidences!
A man is dead, a soldier who had no known motive to kill himself. And yet the authorities rushed to confirm that it was a suicide, and not the accidental discharge of a bullet which, however rarely, can happen, but apparently did not in this case.
The alternative explanation, given the exquisite timing and the other coincidences, is that it was an attempted assassination, targeting one or more of the three heads of state, that failed. Possible alternatives might be: Ghanan was the shooter and was felled by his "guarding partner," the guarding partner was the assassin who sought to eliminate a potential witness or preventer of the crime, or to make it appear that he shot dead the would-be assassin, making the dead Ghanan into a patsy that could not defend himself from the grave. Or another Israeli sniper may have detected what were perceived to be suspicious movements on the roof and shot Ghanan, appropriately or erroneously, causing him to fall off.
The fact that no shot hit a head of state means that the issue can be safely swept under the rug, except of course for the Ghanan family and any witnesses who saw what really happened, or who were personally involved in the rooftop drama. For them it was a tragedy and a trauma, if not a crime.
This is not an allegation of a conspiracy, but a query about odd circumstances and unanswered questions. At this time, no one has offered concrete proof of foul play, and there is every reason to believe that no one every will. The "guarding partner" and the female soldiers will be kept far from the media.
There is every motive to do so for the powers that be: an assassination attempt during an official ceremony for a visiting head of state would be a security failure of catastrophic proportions. Thus there is a national security interest in covering up a possible assassination attempt, so that foreign leaders will not think twice before coming to visit security-conscious Israel, the reputed world leader in personal VIP protection.
But one suspects that foreign VIPs, should they dare to visit, may no longer tarry on the tarmac. Hearing the Israeli marching band is just not worth it.
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Security/12942.htm