Pressure grows on Israel over death of cameraman
CLAIRE COZENS
Guardian, 14 July 2003
The mother of James Miller, the award-winning journalist killed while working in Israel, has urged Tony Blair to press for a formal investigation into his death when he meets the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, today.
Eileen Miller called on the prime minister to secure justice for her son, who was shot dead while making a documentary in a Gaza strip refugee camp on May 2 this year.
"Until the investigation is completed - and one hazards a guess about how good it will be - we will not feel satisfied," she told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
"We hope that this week when Ariel Sharon is here that Jack Straw and Tony Blair are not just talking about the road map (peace plan) but justice for a Briton with a white flag who was killed."
Miller was killed in the village of Rafah in early May and an autopsy at the time confirmed he was almost certainly killed by an Israeli soldier, despite the army's assertions to the contrary.
The government at the time demanded an Israeli military police criminal investigation into Miller's death and the shooting of another Briton, peace activist Tom Hurndall, by the army in Gaza, but Miller's family want to keep the pressure up on the Israeli authorities.
Miller's father has already travelled to Israel in an effort to find out the truth about his son's death.
Israeli defence forces have claimed he was caught in crossfire, even though video evidence clearly shows that Miller and his team were carrying white flags and shouting to Israeli soldiers that they were British journalists.
Israeli military authorities are conducting an internal investigation into Miller's death and interviewing the soldiers concerned.
But they are not talking to other eyewitnesses or examining video evidence or the scene of the shooting.
Miller's family is pressing for a full criminal investigation, and the British government has backed their call.
Miller, a married father of two, last year won a One World award for Beneath the Veil, the film he and Saira Shah made for Channel 4 about women living under the Taliban in Afghanistan.
He was filming a house demolition in the Gaza Strip near the Egyptian borders for a film for US cable network HBO when he was killed.