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one of his killers Yosef Ben-David
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Mohamed Abu Khudeir, 16, june 12 2014 Burned alive by settlers |
1 aug 2016
Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem Sunday indicted two Palestinian young men: Naser Abu Khudair, 19, and Mohammad Abu Khudair, 21, from Shufat in Occupied Jerusalem.
The charges against both Palestinian youths included throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at the Israeli light train as well as at policemen in addition to weapon possession and shooting within neighborhoods.
Radio Israel reported that the attacks mentioned above took place in the wake of the Israeli crime of murdering their relative minor Mohammad Abu Khudair by burning him alive at the hands of three Israeli settlers in 2014.
The charges against both Palestinian youths included throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at the Israeli light train as well as at policemen in addition to weapon possession and shooting within neighborhoods.
Radio Israel reported that the attacks mentioned above took place in the wake of the Israeli crime of murdering their relative minor Mohammad Abu Khudair by burning him alive at the hands of three Israeli settlers in 2014.
16 june 2016
The Israeli army refused a demand filed by the family of minor martyr Abu Khudair from Occupied Jerusalem asking for demolishing the homes of the settlers who burned alive and murdered their son two years ago.
Maariv Hebrew newspaper revealed, Thursday morning, that Israeli war ministry justified the refusal decision by the claim that the Palestinians’ attacks are so many compared to the Israelis'.
The newspaper pointed out that the family of Abu Khudair is about to file an appeal before the Israeli Supreme Court.
Israeli forces knock down the homes of Palestinians who carry out anti-occupation attacks and refrain from taking similar measures against settlers who commit crimes and murders against Palestinians regardless of how much ugly they are such as burning alive child Abu Khudair and the Dawabsheh’s family.
Maariv Hebrew newspaper revealed, Thursday morning, that Israeli war ministry justified the refusal decision by the claim that the Palestinians’ attacks are so many compared to the Israelis'.
The newspaper pointed out that the family of Abu Khudair is about to file an appeal before the Israeli Supreme Court.
Israeli forces knock down the homes of Palestinians who carry out anti-occupation attacks and refrain from taking similar measures against settlers who commit crimes and murders against Palestinians regardless of how much ugly they are such as burning alive child Abu Khudair and the Dawabsheh’s family.
12 may 2016
The Palestinian family of minor Mohammad Abu Khudair, who was burned alive by Israeli settlers, demanded the Israeli Minister of Interior Aryeh Deri to withdraw the Israeli nationality from the killers of their son.
They also demanded the Security Minister Moshe Ya’alon to immediately work on razing their homes.
The family’s demands came in official letters submitted by the family’s lawyer Muhand Jebarah to both ministers after the Israeli Supreme Court last week sentenced the murderer of their son Joseph Haim Ben-David.
Lawyer Jebara said that child Abu Khudair was killed just for being an Arab based on ideological backgrounds.
It is considered a terrorist action based on the Israeli law which gives both ministers authorities to take back the nationality of the killers and to raze their homes, he pointed out.
If ministers did not answer the family’s demands, they would head to the Israeli Supreme Court in order to gain executive orders that oblige them to implement those demands, he added.
They also demanded the Security Minister Moshe Ya’alon to immediately work on razing their homes.
The family’s demands came in official letters submitted by the family’s lawyer Muhand Jebarah to both ministers after the Israeli Supreme Court last week sentenced the murderer of their son Joseph Haim Ben-David.
Lawyer Jebara said that child Abu Khudair was killed just for being an Arab based on ideological backgrounds.
It is considered a terrorist action based on the Israeli law which gives both ministers authorities to take back the nationality of the killers and to raze their homes, he pointed out.
If ministers did not answer the family’s demands, they would head to the Israeli Supreme Court in order to gain executive orders that oblige them to implement those demands, he added.
3 may 2016
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Yosef Ben-David, convicted of the murder of a Palestinian teenager, also ordered to pay compensation to Abu Khdeir family, and to another Palestinian child he tried to kidnap.
Yosef Ben-David, who was convicted of the kidnapping and gruesome murder of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir, was sentenced on Tuesday to life (25 years) and a cumulative punishment of an additional 20 years in prison. Abu Khdeir’s murder sparked a wave of terrorism in Jerusalem. Ben-David and two minors, who were both convicted for their role in the murder, abducted the 16-year-old teenager and killed him after the funeral of the three Jewish teens Gil-Ad Shaer, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrach, who were kidnapped and murdered on June 12, 2014. |
A day earlier, the three defendants tried to kidnap seven-year-old Moussa Zaloum while he was walking down the street in Beit Hanina with his mother and two brothers.
The Jerusalem District Court also ordered Ben-David to pay NIS 150,000 in compensation to the Abu Khdeir family, and NIS 20,000 to Moussa Zaloum.
Shortly before his sentencing was announced, Ben-David apologized to the Abu Khdeir family for the first time, saying "Everything that happened was out of my control. It's not my character and not who I am. I apologize and ask for forgiveness."
Ben-David further noted that "in the past, I worked for ZAKA, I collected the remains of both Jews and Arabs. I've always sanctified human life and honored the dead."
Ben-David, 30, was convicted last month of the murder in July 2014 after a November court ruling found him responsible for his actions, but did not convict him because of a previous psychiatric assessment presented by his attorneys that questioned his sanity.
Abu Khdeir's father Hussein said the sentence was not enough, "We want him to stay in prison for the rest of his life and die there."
Members of the Abu Khdeir family who were at the sentencing hearing called out "death sentence" at Ben-David, adding that he's a "murderer," "racist," and "trash."
The Abu Khdeir family's lawyer, Muhand Jabariya, said he submitted a request to Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan to consider destroying Ben-David's house, as is commonly done by Israel as an act of deterrence against Palestinian terrorists.
The prosecution welcomed the sentencing, saying "Every person, of every religion and race, ought to know that if he commits such acts - whatever the ideology he claims to act in the name of - the law enforcement system will bring him to justice."
The prosecution initially sought an unusually harsh punishment of 60 years imprisonment: 12 for the kidnapping of Moussa Zaloum, 20 for the kidnapping of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, and three additional year for setting fire to vehicles.
Prosecutor Uri Korev from the Jerusalem District Attorney's Office stressed that unlike his two accomplices, Ben-David has not taken responsibility or expressed remorse for his actions.
"This is a man who dragged his relatives into committing a kidnapping and a murder of an innocent teenager. A man who committed incomprehensible and revolting acts. We didn't hear any remorse from the defendant. He committed these acts out of barbarous motives of revenge, and he's placing the responsibility for the acts on his accomplices, who are minors, and claims he is being falsely accused."
Ben-David's attorney, meanwhile, argued for diminished responsibility for his client due to the defendant's mental state.
According to the conviction, in the late evening hours of July 2, 2014, Ben-David and the two minors, after making preparations and equipping themselves in advance, headed out to commit the "revenge attack" in memory of the three yeshiva students.
They searched for a suitable victim for three hours in the neighborhoods of Wadi al-Joz and Beit Hanina in East Jerusalem until, around 4am, they saw Mohammed Abu Khdeir on his way to the mosque for morning prayers.
After snatching him, and while driving towards the Jerusalem forest, the two minors held onto Abu Khdeir, who struggled and tried to free himself, leading Ben-David to order one of them: "Finish him." The minor then strangled Abu Khdeir, until the latter lost consciousness.
When they reached the Jerusalem forest, one of the minors angrily told Ben-David that they "were doing all the work," following which Ben-David took a crowbar and started hitting Abu Khdeir with it, yelling "This is for the Fogel family, this is for Shalhevet Pass" (victims of terror attacks perpetrated by Palestinians -ed.) until the Palestinian teen started bleeding from his head. Ben-David also kicked Abu Khdeir several times while yelling "This is for Gil-Ad, Naftali, Eyal."
The three then set Abu Khdeir on fire while he was unconscious, and then fled the scene. They destroyed the evidence at Jerusalem's Sacher Park, and then went to Ben-David's home, where they played guitar and then went to sleep.
"The fact that the defendant searched for a victim, along with defendant 2, on the first night, and did the same on the second night, is indicative of his ideologically-motivated determination and conscious decision to take revenge, rather than uncontrollable obsession," the court said in its ruling. "The defendant was in control of all of the acts; he spurred others and encouraged them, and reacted rationally to everything that occurred. He gave instructions, and in the critical moment, when the victim was lying on the ground and breathing his final breathes, he kicked him and proclaimed the motives to this act of revenge."
The Jerusalem District Court also ordered Ben-David to pay NIS 150,000 in compensation to the Abu Khdeir family, and NIS 20,000 to Moussa Zaloum.
Shortly before his sentencing was announced, Ben-David apologized to the Abu Khdeir family for the first time, saying "Everything that happened was out of my control. It's not my character and not who I am. I apologize and ask for forgiveness."
Ben-David further noted that "in the past, I worked for ZAKA, I collected the remains of both Jews and Arabs. I've always sanctified human life and honored the dead."
Ben-David, 30, was convicted last month of the murder in July 2014 after a November court ruling found him responsible for his actions, but did not convict him because of a previous psychiatric assessment presented by his attorneys that questioned his sanity.
Abu Khdeir's father Hussein said the sentence was not enough, "We want him to stay in prison for the rest of his life and die there."
Members of the Abu Khdeir family who were at the sentencing hearing called out "death sentence" at Ben-David, adding that he's a "murderer," "racist," and "trash."
The Abu Khdeir family's lawyer, Muhand Jabariya, said he submitted a request to Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan to consider destroying Ben-David's house, as is commonly done by Israel as an act of deterrence against Palestinian terrorists.
The prosecution welcomed the sentencing, saying "Every person, of every religion and race, ought to know that if he commits such acts - whatever the ideology he claims to act in the name of - the law enforcement system will bring him to justice."
The prosecution initially sought an unusually harsh punishment of 60 years imprisonment: 12 for the kidnapping of Moussa Zaloum, 20 for the kidnapping of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, and three additional year for setting fire to vehicles.
Prosecutor Uri Korev from the Jerusalem District Attorney's Office stressed that unlike his two accomplices, Ben-David has not taken responsibility or expressed remorse for his actions.
"This is a man who dragged his relatives into committing a kidnapping and a murder of an innocent teenager. A man who committed incomprehensible and revolting acts. We didn't hear any remorse from the defendant. He committed these acts out of barbarous motives of revenge, and he's placing the responsibility for the acts on his accomplices, who are minors, and claims he is being falsely accused."
Ben-David's attorney, meanwhile, argued for diminished responsibility for his client due to the defendant's mental state.
According to the conviction, in the late evening hours of July 2, 2014, Ben-David and the two minors, after making preparations and equipping themselves in advance, headed out to commit the "revenge attack" in memory of the three yeshiva students.
They searched for a suitable victim for three hours in the neighborhoods of Wadi al-Joz and Beit Hanina in East Jerusalem until, around 4am, they saw Mohammed Abu Khdeir on his way to the mosque for morning prayers.
After snatching him, and while driving towards the Jerusalem forest, the two minors held onto Abu Khdeir, who struggled and tried to free himself, leading Ben-David to order one of them: "Finish him." The minor then strangled Abu Khdeir, until the latter lost consciousness.
When they reached the Jerusalem forest, one of the minors angrily told Ben-David that they "were doing all the work," following which Ben-David took a crowbar and started hitting Abu Khdeir with it, yelling "This is for the Fogel family, this is for Shalhevet Pass" (victims of terror attacks perpetrated by Palestinians -ed.) until the Palestinian teen started bleeding from his head. Ben-David also kicked Abu Khdeir several times while yelling "This is for Gil-Ad, Naftali, Eyal."
The three then set Abu Khdeir on fire while he was unconscious, and then fled the scene. They destroyed the evidence at Jerusalem's Sacher Park, and then went to Ben-David's home, where they played guitar and then went to sleep.
"The fact that the defendant searched for a victim, along with defendant 2, on the first night, and did the same on the second night, is indicative of his ideologically-motivated determination and conscious decision to take revenge, rather than uncontrollable obsession," the court said in its ruling. "The defendant was in control of all of the acts; he spurred others and encouraged them, and reacted rationally to everything that occurred. He gave instructions, and in the critical moment, when the victim was lying on the ground and breathing his final breathes, he kicked him and proclaimed the motives to this act of revenge."
21 apr 2016
Channel 10 airs footage of Yosef Ben-David detailing to police investigators how he and his two accomplices hit the Palestinian teenager with a crow-bar and then poured gasoline over him and set him on fire.
Two days after Yosef Ben-David, 30, was found guilty of the murder of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir, Channel 10 broadcast a chilling reconstruction of the murder in which the killer details exactly how it transpired.
Ben-David described how he and his two accomplices selected their victim and recounted the smallest details of how Abu Khdeir was murdered.
“We didn’t see a minor, we saw a man. He was tall and he was wearing a hood,” Ben-David said before elaborating on how the convicted trio kidnapped him.
Ben-David said that when Abu Khdeir was asked how to get to Tel Aviv or the Damascus Gate, he responded: "I am an Arab. I don’t understand."
"We covered his mouth so he couldn’t talk and put him in the car. The door didn’t close because his leg was blocking it. So we uncovered his mouth, and as a result he screamed,” Ben-David recounted.
In a state of panic, one of Ben-David's co-conspirators told him, "I am choking him (Abu Khdeir)."
"I said that maybe we should leave (Abu Khdeir), put him on the side (of the road) and forget it.”
All the while Abu Khdeir couldn't breathe, he said. Asked to re-enact how this was done, Ben-David replied: “I don’t want to demonstrate on a Jew.”
As the reconstruction proceeded, Ben-David took the investigators to the exact place where he took his victim and struck him with a crow-bar while exclaiming: “This is for the Fogel family, this is for Shalhevet Pass (a Jewish baby shot in 2001 by a Palestinian sniper - ed.).”
Ben-David then demanded that he be brought the the bottle of gasoline: “I poured it all over him. One bottle, one liter. I lit a lighter and didn’t think about anything. In one second he was aflame.”
Before the three kidnapped Abu Khdeir, they also attacked an Arab family. “We decided that we will go for a woman, attack her and go. She won’t bring any more terrorists into the world,” Ben-David continued. “She was walking with a stroller with two children. One on her right was wearing a white t-shirt and the second on the left was wearing a yellow shirt. We grabbed the boy in white by his throat and the second boy tried to kick us.”
After the woman began screaming and resisting, one of the gang punched her in the face which “sent her about three meters and she screamed and screamed. He then got back into the car and we drove off,” he recalled.
The three then contemplated their next victim and resolved “to simply take someone. We turned on the radio in Arabic, so that they wouldn’t recognize us. We were always taught to bless God’s name and not shame it. This is something which I always keep in mind. So we took off our kippah (yarmulke) for the first time in our lives so that we didn’t shame God’s name,” said Ben-David.
Shortly after this they spotted Abu Khdeir. “I said to them: yes, yes, yes him. Excellent. Excellent.”
After they set Abu Khdeir on fire, he explained “I took off the Arab’s sandals. I put them one on top of the other. We each washed our hands in the sprinklers and freshened up."
The Jerusalem District Court convicted Ben-David of murder on Tuesday after the protracted legal proceedings were delayed for months by psychiatric evaluations purporting that the defendant was clinically insane and that he was not responsible for his actions. However, the plea was disregarded after a court-appointed psychiatric evaluation rejected the assertion.
Abu Khdeir was murdered in July 2014 in revenge for the kidnapping and murder of the three teenagers, Gil-Ad Shaer, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrach.
Indeed, a day before Abu Khdeir’s murder, Ben-David and his accomplices attempted to kidnap seven-year-old Mussa Zalum as he walked with his mother and two brothers in Beit Hanina. The three scouted the area until they arrived at the Shuafat neighborhood in East Jerusalem, where they argued for twenty minutes about who to kidnap. “Let’s kidnap a minor. A woman screams more than a man,” one of them suggested.
Close to 3:45pm, they spotted Aby Khdeir. Two of them exited the vehicle and glanced at him to confirm that he was an Arab. Suspicious of the three, Abu Khdeir called his uncle and attempted to distance himself before they hit him and forced him into the car. During the struggle which ensued, Khdeir kicked one of his attackers in the head who shouted “finish him!”
Two days after Yosef Ben-David, 30, was found guilty of the murder of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir, Channel 10 broadcast a chilling reconstruction of the murder in which the killer details exactly how it transpired.
Ben-David described how he and his two accomplices selected their victim and recounted the smallest details of how Abu Khdeir was murdered.
“We didn’t see a minor, we saw a man. He was tall and he was wearing a hood,” Ben-David said before elaborating on how the convicted trio kidnapped him.
Ben-David said that when Abu Khdeir was asked how to get to Tel Aviv or the Damascus Gate, he responded: "I am an Arab. I don’t understand."
"We covered his mouth so he couldn’t talk and put him in the car. The door didn’t close because his leg was blocking it. So we uncovered his mouth, and as a result he screamed,” Ben-David recounted.
In a state of panic, one of Ben-David's co-conspirators told him, "I am choking him (Abu Khdeir)."
"I said that maybe we should leave (Abu Khdeir), put him on the side (of the road) and forget it.”
All the while Abu Khdeir couldn't breathe, he said. Asked to re-enact how this was done, Ben-David replied: “I don’t want to demonstrate on a Jew.”
As the reconstruction proceeded, Ben-David took the investigators to the exact place where he took his victim and struck him with a crow-bar while exclaiming: “This is for the Fogel family, this is for Shalhevet Pass (a Jewish baby shot in 2001 by a Palestinian sniper - ed.).”
Ben-David then demanded that he be brought the the bottle of gasoline: “I poured it all over him. One bottle, one liter. I lit a lighter and didn’t think about anything. In one second he was aflame.”
Before the three kidnapped Abu Khdeir, they also attacked an Arab family. “We decided that we will go for a woman, attack her and go. She won’t bring any more terrorists into the world,” Ben-David continued. “She was walking with a stroller with two children. One on her right was wearing a white t-shirt and the second on the left was wearing a yellow shirt. We grabbed the boy in white by his throat and the second boy tried to kick us.”
After the woman began screaming and resisting, one of the gang punched her in the face which “sent her about three meters and she screamed and screamed. He then got back into the car and we drove off,” he recalled.
The three then contemplated their next victim and resolved “to simply take someone. We turned on the radio in Arabic, so that they wouldn’t recognize us. We were always taught to bless God’s name and not shame it. This is something which I always keep in mind. So we took off our kippah (yarmulke) for the first time in our lives so that we didn’t shame God’s name,” said Ben-David.
Shortly after this they spotted Abu Khdeir. “I said to them: yes, yes, yes him. Excellent. Excellent.”
After they set Abu Khdeir on fire, he explained “I took off the Arab’s sandals. I put them one on top of the other. We each washed our hands in the sprinklers and freshened up."
The Jerusalem District Court convicted Ben-David of murder on Tuesday after the protracted legal proceedings were delayed for months by psychiatric evaluations purporting that the defendant was clinically insane and that he was not responsible for his actions. However, the plea was disregarded after a court-appointed psychiatric evaluation rejected the assertion.
Abu Khdeir was murdered in July 2014 in revenge for the kidnapping and murder of the three teenagers, Gil-Ad Shaer, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrach.
Indeed, a day before Abu Khdeir’s murder, Ben-David and his accomplices attempted to kidnap seven-year-old Mussa Zalum as he walked with his mother and two brothers in Beit Hanina. The three scouted the area until they arrived at the Shuafat neighborhood in East Jerusalem, where they argued for twenty minutes about who to kidnap. “Let’s kidnap a minor. A woman screams more than a man,” one of them suggested.
Close to 3:45pm, they spotted Aby Khdeir. Two of them exited the vehicle and glanced at him to confirm that he was an Arab. Suspicious of the three, Abu Khdeir called his uncle and attempted to distance himself before they hit him and forced him into the car. During the struggle which ensued, Khdeir kicked one of his attackers in the head who shouted “finish him!”
19 apr 2016
Yosef Ben-David, 30, convicted of the murder of the Palestinian youth in July 2014; the Jerusalem district psychiatrist stated that Ben-David is an imposter and is responsible for his actions.
Yosef Ben-David, 30, was convicted on Tuesday morning of murdering Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir in July 2014, after the Jerusalem District Court found him responsible for his actions.
In November, the Jerusalem District Court ruled that Ben-David committed the murder, but did not convict him because of a previous psychiatric assessment presented by his attorneys which questioned his sanity.
In February, however, a court-appointed psychiatrist has determined that Ben-David is responsible for his actions and fit to stand trial. Furthermore, the psychiatrist determined that Ben-David's claims were not credible and was only pretending to be insane.
But Ben-David’s defense team filed for further psychiatric evaluation. In a private opinion written by Dr. Yonathan Sirkin, it was determined that he committed the kidnapping and murder during a psychotic episode, and therefore is not responsible for his actions.
The judges, however, determined that Ben-David did not have a psychotic episode, and is responsible for his actions.
Hussein, Abu Kdheir’s father, said at the end of the hearing, "We knew from the beginning that he was not crazy but rather a liar. It hurts us very much. The trial lasted too long, this is the 35th hearing. Every time we see him our blood boils."
Before the hearing, Hussein demanded justice, saying "Their house should be destroyed, as is done to the Arabs. I expect that he will remain in prison for life and that he will not receive a pardon.”
MKs Ahmed Tibi and Osama Saadi (Joint List) attended the hearing.
Abu Khdeir’s murder sparked a wave of terrorism in Jerusalem. Ben-David and two minors, who were both convicted for their role in the murder, abducted the 16-year-old teenager and killed him after the funeral of the three Jewish teens Gil-Ad Shaer, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrach who were kidnapped and murdered on June 12, 2014.
Yosef Ben-David, 30, was convicted on Tuesday morning of murdering Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir in July 2014, after the Jerusalem District Court found him responsible for his actions.
In November, the Jerusalem District Court ruled that Ben-David committed the murder, but did not convict him because of a previous psychiatric assessment presented by his attorneys which questioned his sanity.
In February, however, a court-appointed psychiatrist has determined that Ben-David is responsible for his actions and fit to stand trial. Furthermore, the psychiatrist determined that Ben-David's claims were not credible and was only pretending to be insane.
But Ben-David’s defense team filed for further psychiatric evaluation. In a private opinion written by Dr. Yonathan Sirkin, it was determined that he committed the kidnapping and murder during a psychotic episode, and therefore is not responsible for his actions.
The judges, however, determined that Ben-David did not have a psychotic episode, and is responsible for his actions.
Hussein, Abu Kdheir’s father, said at the end of the hearing, "We knew from the beginning that he was not crazy but rather a liar. It hurts us very much. The trial lasted too long, this is the 35th hearing. Every time we see him our blood boils."
Before the hearing, Hussein demanded justice, saying "Their house should be destroyed, as is done to the Arabs. I expect that he will remain in prison for life and that he will not receive a pardon.”
MKs Ahmed Tibi and Osama Saadi (Joint List) attended the hearing.
Abu Khdeir’s murder sparked a wave of terrorism in Jerusalem. Ben-David and two minors, who were both convicted for their role in the murder, abducted the 16-year-old teenager and killed him after the funeral of the three Jewish teens Gil-Ad Shaer, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrach who were kidnapped and murdered on June 12, 2014.
13 apr 2016
Attorney of youth sentenced to 21 years for involvement in murder of Palestinian teenager claims: 'He was unaware of any murderous intentions'; main suspect in the case, Yosef Ben-David Haim, to be sentenced next week.
One of the two minors convicted for the kidnapping and murder of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir in July 2014 appealed his sentence to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, claiming he only played a minor role in the attack.
The defendant was sentenced to "only" 21 years in prison after judges determined that he played a “minor role” in the murder, while his accomplice received a life sentence.
According to the appellant's attorney, Avi Hymie, his client was unaware of the intentions of his two accomplices to carry out a murder.
Moreover, he repeated a previous line of defense that the accused was 16 years old at the time of the murder and that despite the minor role he played, his intentions were limited to merely kidnapping and beating an Arab in revenge for the kidnapping and murder of the three Jewish teens Gil-Ad Shaer, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrach a month prior to Khdeir's murder. He further noted that his client sat with his back to his two companions during the journey after they burned Khdeir to death.
Due to the fact that the murder was not premeditated and that he neither wanted nor intended to kill Khdeir, the attorney contended, a sentence based on murder and kidnapping with intent to murder, as determined by the courts, was legally untenable.
During the sentencing, Judges Yaakov Saban and Rivka Freidman Feldman justified the more lenient sentence in comparison to his accomplice, claiming that "he is young and could potentially be rehabilitated. Despite his nefarious actions - in which he kidnapped the deceased, prevented him from resisting and helped strangle him - he did not physically participate in the latter parts (of the attack) in which gasoline or oil was poured on the victim’s body.”
The second individual who was indicted for the murder, represented by attorney Zion Amir, requested an extension to present an appeal.
The Jerusalem District Court will determine next week whether to sentence the third and central suspect in the incident, Yosef Haim Ben David, or to accept a personal medical assessment which raises questions about his mental stability and which could absolve him of responsibility for his actions.
One of the two minors convicted for the kidnapping and murder of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir in July 2014 appealed his sentence to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, claiming he only played a minor role in the attack.
The defendant was sentenced to "only" 21 years in prison after judges determined that he played a “minor role” in the murder, while his accomplice received a life sentence.
According to the appellant's attorney, Avi Hymie, his client was unaware of the intentions of his two accomplices to carry out a murder.
Moreover, he repeated a previous line of defense that the accused was 16 years old at the time of the murder and that despite the minor role he played, his intentions were limited to merely kidnapping and beating an Arab in revenge for the kidnapping and murder of the three Jewish teens Gil-Ad Shaer, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrach a month prior to Khdeir's murder. He further noted that his client sat with his back to his two companions during the journey after they burned Khdeir to death.
Due to the fact that the murder was not premeditated and that he neither wanted nor intended to kill Khdeir, the attorney contended, a sentence based on murder and kidnapping with intent to murder, as determined by the courts, was legally untenable.
During the sentencing, Judges Yaakov Saban and Rivka Freidman Feldman justified the more lenient sentence in comparison to his accomplice, claiming that "he is young and could potentially be rehabilitated. Despite his nefarious actions - in which he kidnapped the deceased, prevented him from resisting and helped strangle him - he did not physically participate in the latter parts (of the attack) in which gasoline or oil was poured on the victim’s body.”
The second individual who was indicted for the murder, represented by attorney Zion Amir, requested an extension to present an appeal.
The Jerusalem District Court will determine next week whether to sentence the third and central suspect in the incident, Yosef Haim Ben David, or to accept a personal medical assessment which raises questions about his mental stability and which could absolve him of responsibility for his actions.
