The sources said that the police removed the body from a cemetery near Al-Aqsa Mosque Complex around midnight in the presence of representatives from the Israel Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir, the Palestinian Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Dees, the Israeli Ministry of Justice and Al-Joulani’s relatives and attorneys.
According to the sources, the removal of the body came after the Jerusalem’s Magistrate Court accepted the family’s petition to remove the body “to prove that Al-Joulani was killed in cold blood by Israeli soldiers.”
The sources said the family of Al-Joulani asked their lawyers to collect affidavits of people who witnessed a June 18 confrontation between police and Al-Joulani. Police claim the shopkeeper and father of three attempted a “terrorist attack” by attempting to run over officers with his vehicle, subsequently leaving “some” officers “lightly wounded.” The man was then gunned down as he exited the vehicle.
The family maintains that Al-Joulani was driving by when police were responding to rock-throwing Palestinian youths; a rock struck the man’s vehicle, causing him to swerve and strike a police cruiser. Witnesses also claim Al-Joulani was only lightly wounded in the arm until police continued to open fire on him as he exited his vehicle, including a fatal close-range gunshot to the head. The West Bank-based government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said then that it “strongly condemns the crime of the occupation force in Jerusalem.”
