Asked by this writer whether the DOJ had received the autopsy report on
Dogan, DOJ spokesperson Laura Sweeney refused to comment
By Gareth Porter via
t r u t h o u t
Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish
descent, was aboard the Mavi Marmara when he was killed by Israeli
commandos. (Photo: freegazaorg; Edited: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)
The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office
of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the
Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively,
for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens
were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos.
The report reveals that Dogan, the 19-year-old US
citizen of Turkish descent, was filming with a small video camera on the
top deck of the Mavi Marmara when he was shot twice in the head, once in
the back and in the left leg and foot and that he was shot in the face at
point blank range while lying on the ground.
The report says Dogan had apparently been “lying on
the deck in a conscious or semi-conscious, state for some time” before being
shot in his face.
The forensic evidence that establishes that fact is
“tattooing around the wound in his face,” indicating that the shot was
“delivered at point blank range.” The report describes the forensic evidence
as showing that “the trajectory of the wound, from bottom to top, together
with a vital abrasion to the left shoulder that could be consistent with the
bullet exit point, is compatible with the shot being received while he was
lying on the ground on his back.”
Based on both “forensic and firearm evidence,” the
fact-finding panel concluded that Dogan’s killing and that of five Turkish
citizens by the Israeli troops on the Mavi Marmari May 31 “can be
characterized as extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions.”
(See Report [.pdf] Page 38, Section 170)
The report confirmed what the Obama administration
already knew from the autopsy report on Dogan, but the administration has
remained silent about the killing of Dogan, which could be an extremely
difficult political problem for the administration in its relations with
Israel.
The Turkish government gave the autopsy report on
Dogan to the US Embassy in July and it was then passed on to the Department
of Justice, according to a US government source who spoke on condition of
anonymity because of the administration’s policy of silence on the matter.
The source said the purpose of obtaining the report was to determine whether
an investigation of the killing by the Justice Department (DOJ) was
appropriate.
Asked by this writer whether the DOJ had received
the autopsy report on Dogan, DOJ spokesperson Laura Sweeney refused to
comment.
The administration has not volunteered any comment on
the fact-finding mission report and was not asked to do so by any news
organization. In response to a query from Truthout, a State Department
official, who could not speak on the record, read a statement that did not
explicitly acknowledge the report’s conclusion about the Israeli executions.
The statement said the fact-finding mission’s report’s
“tone and conclusions are unbalanced.” It went on to state, “We urge that
this report not be used for actions that could disrupt direct negotiations
between Israel and Palestine that are now underway or actions that would
make it not possible for Israel and Turkey to move beyond the recent strains
in their traditional strong relationship.”
Although the report’s revelations and conclusions
about the killing of Dogan and the five other victims were widely reported
in the Turkish media last week, not a single story on the report has
appeared in US news media.
The administration has made it clear through its
inaction and its explicit public posture that it has no intention of
pressing the issue of the murder of a US citizen in cold blood by Israeli
commandos.
On June 13, two weeks after the Mavi Marmara attack,
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs issued a statement saying that
Israel “should be allowed to undertake an investigation into events that
involve its national security” and that Israel’s military justice system
“meets international standards and is capable of conducting a serious and
credible investigation.”
Another passenger whom forensic evidence shows was
killed execution-style, according to the OHCHR report, is Ibrahim Bilgen, a
60-year-old Turkish citizen. Bilgen is believed by forensics experts to have
been shot initially from the helicopter above the Mavi Marmara and then shot
in the side of the head while lying seriously wounded.
The fact-finding mission was given forensic evidence
that, after the initial shot in chest from above, Bilgen was shot in the
head with a “soft baton round at such close proximity that an entire bean
bag and its wadding penetrated the skull and lodged in the chest from
above,” the mission concluded.
“Soft baton rounds” are supposed to be fired for
nonlethal purposes at a distance and aimed only at the stomach, but are
lethal when fired at the head, especially from close range.
The forensic evidence cited by the fact-finding
mission on the killing of Dogan and five other passengers came from both
the autopsy reports and pathology reports done by forensic personnel in
Turkey and from interviews with those who wrote the reports. Experts in
forensic pathology and firearms assisted the mission in interpreting that
forensic evidence.
The account, provided by the OHCHR of the events on
board the Mavi Marmara on its way to help break the economic siege of Gaza
May 31 of this year, refutes the version of events aggressively pushed by
the Israeli military and supports the testimony of passengers on board.
The report suggests that, from the beginning,
Israeli policy viewed the Gaza flotilla as an opportunity to use lethal
force against pro-Hamas activists. It quotes testimony by Israeli Defense
Minister Ehud Barak before the Israeli government’s Turkel Committee that
specific orders were given by the Israeli government “to continue
intelligence tracking of the flotilla organizers with an emphasis on the
possibility that amongst the passengers in the flotilla there were terror
elements who would attempt to harm Israeli forces.”
The idea that the passenger list would be seeded with
terrorists determined to attack Israeli defense forces appears to have been
a ploy to justify treating the operation as likely to require the use of
military force against the passengers.
When details of the Israeli plan to forcibly take over
the ships in the flotilla were published in the Israeli press on May 30, the
passengers on board the Mavi Marmara realized that the Israelis might use
deadly force against them. Some leaders of the IHH (the Foundation for Human
Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Aid), which had purchased the ships for
the mission, were advocating defending the boat against the Israeli boarding
attempt, whereas other passengers advocated nonviolence only.
That led to efforts to create improvised weapons from
railings and other equipment on the Mavi Marmara. However, the commission
concluded that there was no evidence of any firearms having being taken
aboard the ship, as charged by Israel.
The report notes that the Israeli military never
communicated a request by radio to inspect the cargo on board any of the
ships, apparently contradicting the official justification given by the
Israeli government for the military attack on the Mavi Marmara and other
ships of preventing any military contraband from reaching Gaza.
According to the OHCHR report, Israeli Chief of
General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi testified to the Turkel Committee August 11
that the initial rules of engagement for the operation prohibited live fire
except in life-threatening situations, but that that they were later
modified to target protesters “deemed to be violent” in response to the
resistance by passengers.
That decision apparently followed the passengers’
successful repulsion of an Israeli effort to board the ship from Zodiac
boats.
The report confirms that, from the beginning of the
operation, passengers were fired on by helicopters flying above the Mavi
Marmara to drop commandos on the deck.
Contrary to Israeli claims that one or more Israeli
troops were wounded by firearms, the report says no medical evidence of a
gunshot wound to an Israeli soldier was found.
The OHCHR report confirms accounts from passengers on
the Mavi Marmara that defenders subdued roughly ten Israeli commandos, took
their weapons from them and threw them in the sea, except for one weapon
hidden as evidence. The Israeli soldiers were briefly sequestered below and
some were treated for wounds before being released by the defenders.
The OHCHR fact-finding mission will certainly be the
most objective, thorough and in-depth inquiry into the events on board the
Mavi Marmara and other ships in the flotilla of the four that have been
announced.
The fact-finding mission was chaired by Judge Karl
T. Hudson-Phillips, Q.C., retired judge of the International Criminal
Court and former attorney general of Trinidad and Tobago, and included Sir
Desmond de Silva, Q.C. of the United Kingdom, former chief prosecutor of
the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone and Ms. Mary
Shanthi Dairiam of Malaysia, founding member of the board of directors of
the International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific.
The mission interviewed 112 eyewitnesses to the
Israeli attack in London, Geneva, Istanbul and Amman, Jordan. The Israeli
government refused to cooperate with the fact-finding mission by making
personnel involved in both planning and carrying out the attack available
to be interviewed.
The Turkish governments announced its own
investigation of the Israeli attack on August 10. UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon announced the formation of a “Panel of Inquiry” on August 2, but its
mandate was much more narrowly defined. It was given the mission to “receive
and review the reports of the national investigations with the view to
recommending ways of avoiding similar incidents in the future.”
Gareth Porter is an
investigative historian and journalist specialising in US national security
policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance:
Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam,” was published in 2006.
