CAIRO, April 24, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – Israeli soldiers lied and tampering with evidence in an attempt to obstruct an inquiry into the killing of a British filmmaker, according to leaked documents published by The Observer on Sunday, April 24.

“Evidence shows that Second Lieutenant H. heard his soldiers lying in their testimonies during the investigation, and unfortunately did not mention that fact to his commanders, that his soldiers are giving them details that are not true,” said a 79-page report by the chief lawyer of the Israeli army's southern command into the shooting of James Miller in the Gaza Strip.

The version of events offered by the soldier originally implicated in the shooting, identified only as Second Lieutenant H, were so contradictory that his accounts were described in the report as coming “full circle”.

Miller, 34-year-old award-winning television journalist, was shot dead in the town of Rafah near the Egyptian border in May 2003 as he was filming a stand-up for a documentary on the Israeli army's demolition of hundreds of homes in the Palestinian territories.

His crew said they were carrying a white flag and identified themselves as British media to Israeli troops in the area, but as they left a Palestinian home they were fired upon and a bullet struck Miller in the neck, between his helmet and bullet-proof vest.

An autopsy carried out in Israel with a British doctor present found that the freelance journalist was hit by a bullet from an M-16 assault rifle fired by Israeli soldiers facing him.

His father, Geoffrey, said that “by allowing vital evidence to be tampered with, the Israeli army was complicit in my son's murder”.

According to the report, all the soldiers interviewed changed their testimonies from accounts given to an earlier inquiry by the military police.

“Their versions paint a poor picture, to say the least,” it states.

“Not only that there are differences and contradictions between one soldier's version to another soldier's version, but there are also contradictions and differences within one soldier's testimony itself, many times in the same version one could not find any coherence.”

By contrast, army lawyers said all journalists and Palestinian witnesses interviewed gave reliable accounts.

According to the report, the barrel of the rifle understood to have been used in the shooting two years ago was changed.

It maintained that rifles submitted as part of the investigation could not have been those used in the shooting because it was “impossible” that bullets found at the scene in Rafah belonged to the weapons surrendered.

“It is important to point out that during the investigation a concern was raised, based on intelligence information, that some of the soldiers later changed the barrel they used during the event with a different barrel,” said the report.

More evidence of a cover-up is underlined by the disappearance of videotapes that would have been recorded by the army's observation system and may have filmed Miller's death.

“Despite several attempts to locate them, the tapes from 3 May 2003 have never been found”, said the report.

Miller’s widow condemned as a “mockery” of justice the Israeli army earlier decision not to take action against the officer accused of responsibility over the fatal shooting.

“It shows that Israeli military activities in Gaza are carried out with impunity,” Sophie Miller, 34, said in a statement.

“We deplore the total failure to hold anyone responsible for the most serious breaches of Israeli rules of engagement.”

The widow also accused the Israeli forces of having no interest in establishing the facts surrounding the killing.

“We believed at the outset there was no genuine will to uncover the truth because the site of James's death was not secured for forensic investigation; the site was destroyed by bulldozers three days after James's death; it took the Israelis 11 weeks to impound the guns involved in James's death,” she said.

The Israeli army's judge advocate general had argued that there was insufficient evidence to press charges against the officer.

An Israeli army investigation into the death of 23-year-old American Rachel Corrie concluded that her being crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah in March 2003 had been an accident.

Tom Hurndall, a 22-year-old British activist, died of critical head injuries from a bullet fired by an Israeli soldier in Rafah in April 2003 as he was trying to pull Palestinian children out of danger.

In November 22, Israeli occupation forces gunned down Ian Hook, a British UN worker in Jenin refugee camp.