(Jerusalem Post) Jenny Hazan - U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer Monday criticized the Palestinian military court that on Saturday began to try four individuals suspected of involvement in the attack. "If these people are in fact the suspects that should be tried, it ought to be done in a criminal proceeding and not behind closed doors," Kurtzer said. "We're not even sure that the charge sheet that has been put together reflects the gravity of the crime. The charges seem to implicate these individuals for involuntary manslaughter rather than what we would call first-degree murder." Kurtzer also denounced the PA for the collapse of the road map peace process. "It failed because Palestinians had...not done enough to stop terrorism and had not done enough to uproot the terrorist infrastructure," he said. "A significant amount of American resources have been dedicated to the reconstitution of this mishmash of Palestinian security organizations that don't do security, but exist on paper. Many of the people involved in those organizations actually have resorted to terrorism in the past three and a half years, when in fact their mandate should be to protect the Palestinian people from bad guys and thereby also to stop the terrorism that affects the people of Israel."
2004-02-10 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive