2 terrorists who killed Israeli Dvir Sorek in 2019 sentenced to life in prison
Qassem Asafra and cousin Nasir Asafra, a Hamas member, stabbed the student to death in West Bank
Two terrorists who killed an Israeli teenager in 2019 were sentenced to life imprisonment on Thursday.
Qassem Asafra was handed an additional 40-year sentence, and Nasir Asafra an additional 20 years.
Dvir Sorek, 18, was stabbed to death near the West Bank settlement of Migdal Oz in August 2019. He was a yeshiva student enrolled in a program known as hesder that combines Torah study with military service. He was off-duty at the time of his killing.
Qassem Asafra was also convicted of an attempt to kill two Israelis in a 2011 terror attack in Beersheba, which he had not been caught for at the time.
The military has said that Nasir Asafra was a member of the Hamas terror group. The two convicts are cousins.
Sorek’s body was found on a road leading to the religious seminary where he was studying.
The attackers fled the scene but were apprehended in the town of Beit Kahlil after a 48-hour manhunt.
The attackers told investigators they killed Sorek due to “the suffering of the Palestinian people” and “the situation at Al-Aqsa [Mosque],” according to transcripts of their interrogation obtained by the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
They planned the murder ahead of time, drove to an intersection and waited for an Israeli to attack, they said.
Nasir Asafra attacked Sorek after he got off a bus, first attempting to subdue him with a stun gun, then repeatedly stabbing him in the chest, he said.
“He tried to defend himself by covering his face and upper body with his hands. Then he remained still and didn’t move and I got into the car,” the attacker told investigators.
