2009 gay club shooting was revenge for sexual assault
Suspected shooter named as Haggai Felician, whose relative was allegedly molested by the intended target, a gay activist
An August 2009 shooting in a Tel Aviv gay youth club that killed two and injured 11 was a revenge attack for a sexual assault, according to details from the case approved for publication by a Tel Aviv court on Tuesday.
The details had already been released by police on Monday afternoon in a press conference. However, half an hour after the information was widely circulated in Israeli media, the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court announced that the gag order was still in place, forcing news sites to unpublish their stories and replace them with headlines that screamed about the “farcical” court order.
Last Wednesday, four suspects were arrested in connection with the case: the shooter, a relative of his, another accomplice, and a fourth man, described as a senior LGBT activist, who allegedly molested a relative of the shooter and whom the first three set out to kill.
On Tuesday, the court approved for publication the name of the prime suspect in the shooting, Haggai Felician, 23, and an accomplice, Tarlan Hankishayev, 26, both from the Pardes Katz neighborhood in Bnei Brak.
Felician set out to kill the gay activist after he heard that a relative of his, who was 15 at the time, was sexually assaulted by him, police said.
The court on Tuesday did not lift the gag order on the names of the intended target or the relative of the shooter.
Felician arrived at the club on the evening of August 1, 2009, thinking that the gay activist would be there, police said. However, despite discovering that the man wasn’t on the premises, he opened fire, killing counselor Nir Katz and 16-year-old Liz Trubeshi and wounding 11 others.
The arrest of Felician and his suspected accomplices marked a breakthrough in a case that had police stumped for almost four years. Until their identity and motives were known, police treated the case as a possible hate crime or terror attack.
Police were finally able to make headway in their investigation four months ago, when another person who was reportedly involved in planning the attack surrendered himself to police and turned state’s witness.
The witness told police that he was aware that the suspects intended to harm the alleged sexual molester, but not that they intended to kill him.
He said he had provided the suspects with the address of the youth club where he thought their intended victim would be, as well as information for reaching and escaping from the area. The witness was also said to have provided Felician with the black mask that he wore during the attack.
Tel Aviv District Commander Gadi Eshed said on Monday that the witness’s motives for turning state’s evidence were twofold. First, “his criminal associates turned their backs on him; he felt betrayed in the moment of truth. His second motive stemmed from the fact that he himself is a member of the [gay] community… he felt pangs of conscience.”
The witness, who is serving out a prison term for other offenses, told Ynet that the suspects owed him a lot of money and had “betrayed him.”
The case has been one of the most expensive investigations carried out in recent years and more than 1,000 people were questioned in connection with the shootings, Haaretz reported.
