January 20th 2003 at 2:30 p.m. Israeli
soldiers stopped a PRCS ambulance at Ma'ali Afrim checkpoint. The
soldiers ordered the EMS team and patient out of the vehicle at gunpoint
and ordered the medic to strip naked and stand in a garbage pile. When
he refused to remove his underclothes or stand in the garbage a soldier
held a gun to his head stating he would count to ten and if the medic had
not followed orders by then he would shoot him. The medic again refused.
All IDs were then confiscated and the ambulance was searched. After
one hour, when the driver attempted to negotiate their release with the
soldier, he was ordered back into the ambulance at gunpoint and verbally
assaulted. After two hours and forty-five minutes, a superior officer
returned the IDs to the PRCS team and patient, denied them permission to
continue on route to the Jericho Bridge and ordered them to return to Nablus.
This sights a breach to articles (19,
24,25) of the First Geneva Convention, which guarantees the protection
of medical units and establishments, and the protection of personnel, and
a grave breach of article (50) of the First Geneva Convention which considers
torture, inhuman treatment and causing willful suffering or serious injury
to body or health unjustified by military necessity a war crime.
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