Dubai: An Israeli man was convicted on Tuesday of murdering a Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem, as a court rejected his insanity plea for a crime that helped trigger the 2014 Gaza war.
Prosecutors said Yosef Haim Ben-David organised the killing of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khudair. Two Jewish youths who helped him abduct the teen, who was bludgeoned, strangled and burned alive, were sentenced in February, one to life imprisonment and the other to a 21-year term.
All three defendants had confessed and said the July 2, 2014, murder was revenge for the killing days earlier of three Israeli youths allegedly by the Hamas Islamist group in the occupied West Bank.
Ben-David, 30, lodged an insanity plea that held up his formal conviction and sentencing. After receiving psychological assessments, the court ruled he “fully understood his actions” and found him guilty. He will be sentenced on May 3.
“The court has found that at the time he committed the offence, the accused was not psychotic, fully understood the facts, was responsible for his actions, had no difficulty in understanding reality and had the capacity to prevent the crime,” a statement from the justice ministry describing the ruling said.
Abu Khudair’s killing raised tensions, and a seven-week Israeli offensive against the Hamas-run Gaza Strip began on July 8, 2014, after cross-border Palestinian rocket attacks and an Israeli roundup of suspected militants in the West Bank.
Suha Abu Khudair, the victim’s aunt, said she was surprised by the guilty conviction, having little faith in the Israeli justice system. “He [the convict] deserves the death penalty for committing such a heinous crime. To kill a child like that in such a gruesome way.”
“I hope he and his accomplices never see the light of day, so they cannot be released and free to commit more crimes.” Her son Tarek, an American citizen from Tampa florida, was brutally beaten by Israeli police in occupied Jerusalem after they snatched him during protests against his cousin’s murder.
The American embassy had to intervene to secure Tarek’s release in a case that received international attention.
Suha and her son we’re visiting relatives in occupied Jerusalem at the time.
- with inputs from wires
