Imad Fares petitions against dismissal from IDF
Highest ranking Druze officer files petition with Tel Aviv District Court against IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, claims he did not have relevant details when he deciding to dismiss him over of failure to uphold orders
Brigadier-General Imad Fares on Sunday filed a petition with the Tel Aviv District Court against IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi following the decision to dismiss him from the Israel Defense Forces.
Fares, the former commander of the Galilee Division, was convicted of failure to uphold orders and of military document offenses after he allowed his wife to drive his military-issued vehicle and telling his commander he was in the vehicle with her when she got into a minor accident. Last April, Ashkenazi offered Fares to withdraw from the IDF on his own accord but he refused.
The petition was also filed against Northern Command Chief Gadi Eisenkot, Manpower Directorate chief Avi Zamir and chief of staff-designate Yoav Galant. Fares' attorney claims that Ashkenazi made the decision to dismiss his client without having any detail of the actual event.
Emotional distress?
Fares claims that a day after being asked about the accident by Eisenkot he approached him and stressed he was not in the car with his wife and that any wrong impression he might have given a day earlier stemmed from the fact he had just been notified his nephew had been killed (a repot which later turned out to be false). He also noted he filed a Military Police report with all the accident's details.
Fares now claims that the IDF chief made the decision to dismiss him on November 30 without being aware of these details. "The decision is not reasonable or proportionate and is extreme," his attorney stated. Fares also claims that he was threatened to take responsibility for his actions at the time.
The IDF Spokesperson's Unit said at the time, "Since Brigadier-General Imad Fares' conduct contradicted the values of credibility and truthfulness, which are some of the IDF's central values and are the air the military breathes, the chief of staff informed Brigadier-General Fares that he has concluded his service and will be dismissed from the IDF."
Before being dismissed Fares was reprimanded by IDF deputy chief of staff Benny Ganz.
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