Court orders suspect in assault on journalist held for 3 more days

A magistrate’s court on Sunday extended by three days the remand of man suspected of being part of a gang that assaulted a journalist, stabbing and beating him while he was covering a story in the northern town of Kiryat Ata.

Michael Ben-Sasson, 26, of Kiryat Ata, was arrested last week in connection with the attack on Israel Hayom journalist Daniel Siryoti — and in a separate case was convicted the next day for manslaughter in an earlier stabbing incident.

Siryoti told his newspaper that he lost six teeth in the October 26 attack and suffered from a concussion, but managed to protect his stomach from a serious stab wound.

He said he was trying to interview the family of a woman killed in a car crash earlier that day when he got into a confrontation with a group of men he described as “apparently newly religious,” without further clarification.

“They noticed that I had a journalist’s sticker on my windshield and asked if I was a journalist. They started to curse and said we’re all traitors, we’re all leftists,” Siryoti said. “At one point one of the young men came over on an electric bike, on which he was carrying a child, and tried to block my way. I told him he was endangering the child.”

Siryoti said that was the point at which the group began their attack, punching him, breaking his teeth and attempting to stab him in the stomach.

“I protected myself and got stabbed in the finger,” Siryoti said. “The others hit me in the face and broke my teeth. Somebody came with a switchblade and they shouted, ‘Stab him, stab him.’”

Siryoti said the assault ended when a woman and a man arrived at the scene. The woman told the group that “if you want to stab him, you have to go through me first,” then helped Siryoti to his car with the aid of the man.

Ben-Sasson was arrested last Wednesday and is a key suspect in the attack on Siryoti. Last Friday police told the Krayot Magistrate’s Court that Siryoti had identified Ben-Sasson as among those who attacked him and that he was the one who stabbed him.

Police said “this is a very dangerous suspect, and it was lucky that the incident didn’t end in murder.”

The court on Friday extended his detention by two days.

On Thursday Haifa District Court convicted Ben-Sasson of manslaughter in a plea bargain for stabbing to death Matan Edelstein in 2011.

During an altercation between the two Ben-Sasson stabbed Edelstein, who died shortly afterwards. Ben-Sasson then fled and remained a fugitive for three years until eventually giving himself up.

Edelstein’s mother managed to track down an eyewitness to the stabbing, and even persuaded him to describe to her exactly what happened while their conversation was secretly being recorded by police, Israel Hayom reported Friday. However, although the eyewitness initially agreed to testify against Ben-Sasson, he ultimately fled the country before giving court testimony leading to the case being put on hold in 2014.

In February the case was reopened and Ben-Sasson agreed to a plea bargain in which he confessed to manslaughter and the murder charge was dropped. Prosecutors are expected to ask that he be sentenced to five years in prison and pay NIS 100,000 ($28,360) in damages to Edelstein’s mother. He is to be sentenced at the beginning of the year.