Father of Abu Khdeir’s killer insists he’s insane
After court rejects Yosef Ben David’s insanity plea, dad accuses prosecution of ignoring state of his son’s mental health
Tamar Pileggi is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
The father of an Israeli man convicted in the grisly 2014 abduction and murder of Palestinian teen Muhammed Abu Khdeir insists his son is not mentally sound.
Yosef Ben David, 31, had entered an insanity plea that was rejected by the court this week, with judges determining that he murdered Abu Khdeir for “nationalistic” motives and ruling he was aware of his actions on the night of the killing. His two accomplices, who were minors at the time of the attack, were convicted of murder earlier this year and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences.
“He’s sick,” Saadia Ben David, Yosef’s father, told Channel 2 news on Thursday. “I told them this in my testimony.
“I told [investigators] explicitly: Know that this man is sick. If for one day he doesn’t take his pills, he’ll turn whole worlds upside down,” he said, without specifying what those pills were intended to treat.
Ben David, a Jerusalem resident, was convicted of murder by the Jerusalem District Court on Tuesday. The sentencing hearing is set for next month.
“The court has found that at the time he committed the offense, the accused was not psychotic, fully understood the facts, was responsible for his actions, had no difficulty in understanding reality and had the capacity to prevent the crime,” a statement from the Justice Ministry said.
Ben David’s father accused the prosecution of ignoring the state of his son’s mental health and dismissing expert opinion from overseas.
“We just know that the prosecution and others did everything, everything possible in order to indict. [My son] is sick all the time, they didn’t take that into account, they didn’t care. We brought in experts from the United States who gave their opinions [on his mental health] and they ignored it,” he said.
Ben David’s defense team has indicated they plan to appeal after the sentencing.
Hussein Abu Khdeir, the father of the murdered teen, called Tuesday for Israeli authorities to destroy Ben David’s home in keeping with the policy of demolishing the homes of Palestinian attackers.
“His house should be demolished just like they do for all other terrorists,” he said outside the courtroom.
“Every time I see the faces of those who burned my son, I can’t sleep at night. Such a person should not be shown any leniency, he should get a life sentence,” he stated.
Abu Khdeir, 16, was kidnapped near his home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat and killed on July 1, 2014, two days after it emerged that three Israeli teens who had been abducted several weeks earlier in the West Bank were killed by their Palestinian kidnappers shortly after they were grabbed.
The other two killers — both minors — were sentenced to life in prison and 21 years, respectively. The first, aged 17, was convicted of actively helping in Abu Khdeir’s kidnap-murder. He was sentenced to life for helping to pour gasoline on the teen before he was set alight and ordered to pay NIS 35,000 in reparations to the Abu Khdeir family.
The second, aged 16, was found guilty of helping the 17-year-old and Ben David kill the boy, received a 21-year sentence and was ordered to pay NIS 30,000 in reparations.
The stiff sentences are rare for minors. Israeli law forbids identifying minors convicted of crimes.
Tuesday’s sentencing came amid an ongoing crackdown on Jewish terror following last summer’s fatal torching of a Palestinian home by suspected Jewish radicals.
Israel charged Amiram Ben-Uliel and a minor over the 2015 attack in the West Bank village of Duma, in which a Palestinian toddler and his parents were killed. The sole surviving member of the family, 5-year-old Ahmed Dawabsha, remains hospitalized in Israel as he slowly recovers from severe burns.
Several extreme right-wing Israeli settlers, including alleged ringleader Meir Ettinger, have been detained without charge since the deadly attack on the Dawabsha family home.
Under administrative detention — an anti-terror measure more commonly used for Palestinian security prisoners — a detainee can be held for six months without being charged or tried. The order can be renewed indefinitely in six-month increments.
Jewish extremists are also suspected of attacking Palestinians, torching homes and cars, and vandalizing mosques and churches in the West Bank and Israel.
Legal proceedings against right-wing Jewish extremists are being closely watched at a time of renewed Israeli-Palestinian tensions. A deadly wave of Palestinian stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks targeting Israelis began last year.
Twenty-nine Israelis and four non-Israelis have been killed since October. Some 190 Palestinians have also been killed, about two-thirds of them while attacking Israelis, and the rest during clashes with troops, according to the Israeli army.
Times of Israel staff and AFP contributed to this report.
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