Father of Abu Khdeir compares son’s killer to Islamic State

The father of an Arab teenager murdered by Jewish terrorists compared the main suspect in his son’s death to the Islamic State jihadist group during a hearing Sunday at the Jerusalem District Court.

The court last month convicted two minors in the grisly 2014 kidnapping-murder of 16-year-old Muhammed Abu Khdeir, but said it would wait to convict the main suspect, Yosef Ben-David, until his mental state could be determined. Ben-David was determined in the ruling to have committed the crime, but judges noted his argument toward the end of his trial that he was psychologically impaired at the time. An expert opinion offered by the defense led the court to seek further expert psychiatric opinion.

The Arab teen was kidnapped off the street in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat early on the morning of July 2, 2014, taken to a forest, beaten unconscious and then burned alive, investigators said. The three perpetrators, who all confessed to the crime and reenacted it for investigators, said they did it to avenge the killings of three Israeli teens in the West Bank the month before by a Hamas cell.

Ahead of Sunday’s hearing, father Hussein Abu Khdeir was asked by reporters whether he thought that Ben-David was insane at the time of the murder. According to the NRG news site, he replied that Ben-David “was a dog rather than crazy,” and there was no difference between him and the jihadist Islamic State organization.

At the last hearing in November, Ben-David’s attorney, Asher Ohayon, asked to submit a psychiatric opinion that suggested Ben-David’s mental faculties were impaired at the time. The prosecution argued that the assessment saying Ben-David suffered from a mental condition “which could have affected his actions” failed to substantiate its findings and was inadmissible in court.

Prosecutor Uri Korev also said the opinion was submitted six months after Ben-David was examined by a Prisons Service psychiatrist that found him psychologically fit to stand trial. He also had no problems discussing the crime during police questioning in the days after it occurred.

The presiding judge said he would make a decision in the coming days, without providing a date. The next scheduled hearing in the case, the sentencing of the two convicted minors, will take place January 13.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report