Last update - 00:00 20/12/2007
IDF officer charged with causing death by negligence in car accident
By Yuval Azoulay, Haaretz Correspondent
Two Israel Defense Forces soldiers, including one officer, were charged Thursday with causing death by negligence over their involvement in a car accident in northern Israel last June.
Corporal Avihai Nahum, who was sitting in the back seat of the officer's jeep at the time of the accident, was killed in the crash.
The indictment states that the officer who was driving the jeep tried to illegally overtake another vehicle on a road with bad visibility, nearly colliding with an oncoming car in the opposing lane of traffic.
The driver managed to avoid a collision but both cars spun out of control and caught on fire as a result.
The officer is charged with illegally overtaking a car, while the driver of the vehicle which the officer was overtaking, also an IDF soldier, is charged with failing to allow the jeep to overtake him.