‘A plot written in blood’: Mob boss gets 3 life sentences for killing witnesses

Crime kingpin Yaniv Zaguri received three life sentences Monday for his involvement in the murders of a gangster-turned-state witness, his ex-wife and another prosecution witness.

Zaguri was convicted last month at the Beersheba District Court of the murder of his former right-hand man, Tal Korkus, as well as Korkus’s ex-wife Devorah Hirsch and another witness for the prosecution, Elisha Sabah. The murders occurred in 2016 and 2017.

Korkus had testified against Zaguri in a 2008 trial that led him to serve seven years behind bars.

Monday’s sentence capped off a trial that went on for more than seven years.

The mob boss was escorted into the courtroom under heavy security, reportedly with police snipers positioned on the roof of the court building. Hebrew media reported that police assigned a significant security detail to the judge in the case, Natan Zlochover, following threats on his life.

During the sentencing, Zlochover described the case as a “very bad crime film that is extremely difficult to watch, whose plot is written in blood by evil, anger and revenge.”

In addition to the jail time, Zaguri must pay compensation to the victims’ families amounting to NIS 774,000 ($247,000). He was convicted of three counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, as well as conspiring to commit a crime, witness tampering, illegal firearm possession, weapons dealing, and obstruction of justice.

Zaguri was sentenced alongside three others: his protege Arik Ital, implicated in the murders of Korkus and Sabah, who will serve two life sentences for two counts of premeditated murder; and Moshe Rubin and Amir Ben Shimol, both accomplices in Hirsch’s murder. The latter two will serve one life sentence each.

Rubin and Ben Shimol gunned Hirsch down in 2016 in front of her three children, just before she was scheduled to meet with Zaguri in a bid to make amends. Sabah was murdered in a restaurant in Netanya in 2017, after he testified against one of Zaguri’s gangsters.

Korkus was murdered in 2017, too, in a car explosion in Ashkelon.

Asked during the hearing if he had anything to say, Zaguri said: “Justice isn’t being served here. If there is a crime organization, it is you, the state prosecution.”

Zaguri’s wife, Michal, argued outside the courtroom that her husband and the other defendants were innocent, accusing law enforcement of “persecution and obsession” and voicing hope that after an appeal, the Supreme Court would overturn the ruling.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.