2 Jewish teens indicted for setting fire to Bedouin tent
One youth suspected of deliberately setting fire to Arab property is member of Jewish terror group, investigation says
An indictment was served Monday against two Jewish youths who set fire to a Bedouin tent last month.
According to the indictment, served at the Jerusalem District Court, Avi Gafni, 19, and another teen set fire deliberately to the tent, near the Palestinian village of Ein Samia and sprayed graffiti nearby,
The Shin Bet characterized Gafni as “a violent hilltop activist and member of a Jewish terror group.”
The identity of the second teen, a minor, was kept under gag order
The graffiti, the words “Administrative – Revenge,” was an apparent reference to the recent approval by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to allow Jewish terror suspects to be held without charge, under a controversial mechanism known as administrative detention, and which until that point had only been used for Palestinian suspects.
Property belonging to a Palestinian family was destroyed in the blaze, but there were no injuries.
The suspects were arrested after an investigation by the Jewish Division in the Shin Bet security services. A third suspect was also arrested but later released and given a restraining order.
According to the investigation, the two suspects decided to set alight a tent belonging to Arabs for nationalistic reasons.
Gafni at the time lived in Ma’ale Shlomo, an illegal outpost near the West Bank settlement of Kochav Hashahar, not far from where the tent was located.
The two suspects are accused of arson, conspiracy to commit a crime, issuing threats and obstruction of justice.
“In their actions, the defendants conspired to commit a crime, threatened a person to inflict corporeal harm, to harm his freedom and assets, and set fire deliberately to property not belonging to them, all motivated by racism and hostility toward a community, just because it belongs to a specific ethnic and religious extraction,” the indictment reads.
Gafni had already been handed three restraining orders, following his involvement in setting fire to property and religious items belonging to Palestinians in Jerusalem.
Their lawyer, Adi Keidar, working on behalf of Honenu, an organization supplying legal counsel to right wing activists, said the defendants reject the accusations.
“This indictment is another attempt by the state’s attorneys to challenge the court with weak evidence, based on circumstantial evidence of the lowest quality,” he said.
AP contributed to this report.