JERUSALEM, March 12 (Reuters) - Israel's military on Thursday dropped charges against five soldiers accused of torturing a Palestinian detained during the Gaza war, in a case that exposed divisions within Israel over whether soldiers can abuse enemy prisoners with impunity.
The military announced the decision at a time when much of the country's attention is focused on the war with Iran.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the decision. "The State of Israel must hunt down its enemies, not its own heroic fighters," he said in a statement.
The case gained international attention after right-wing protesters, including members of Netanyahu's cabinet, stormed military compounds in protest of the probe against the soldiers.
It drew further attention when the military's chief legal officer leaked video of the alleged abuse to local media.
The advocate general, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, resigned in October and was later arrested over the leak, an action she said she took to fend off propaganda against the military's legal department entrusted with upholding the rule of law.
Her successor, Major General Itai Ofir, was withdrawing indictments against the soldiers in part due to "exceptional circumstances that negatively affected the ability to prosecute the case while also preserving the right for a fair trial of the defendants in the case," the military said in a statement.
Those circumstances include the fact that the Palestinian subjected to alleged abuse "is currently present in the Gaza Strip and the implications this has on the evidentiary basis," the statement said.
The leaked security camera footage from the Sde Teiman military detention camp for Palestinians arrested during the Gaza war shows soldiers taking a prisoner aside and crowding around while holding a dog and blocking visibility of their actions with their riot gear.
The soldiers faced charges relating to causing severe abuse and injury. The indictment against them said that one of the soldiers stabbed the detainee with a sharp object, causing a tear near his rectum.
Neither the Palestinian detainee, who was released back to Gaza as part of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal in October, nor the Israeli soldiers involved have been identified by name.
There was no immediate comment from Palestinian leaders on the decision.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) previously filed a petition for the closure of Sde Teiman over alleged abuse of Palestinian detainees.
The Israeli military began phasing down use of the facility in June 2024, although accusations from rights groups and former Palestinian detainees of torture and abuse in Israeli detention facilities remain widespread.
(Reporting by Pesha Magid; editing by Rami Ayyub, Editing by William Maclean)
