High Court upholds acquittal of men in lynching of migrant mistaken for terrorist

Panel of 3 judges rejects appeal by prosecutors, finds defendants did not act out of malice and believed they were facing an attacker who still posed danger

Security camera footage showing an Eritrean man being shot in the Beersheba central bus station on October 18, 2015, after he was thought to be a terrorist. (screen capture: Channel 2)
Security camera footage showing an Eritrean man being shot in the Beersheba central bus station on October 18, 2015, after he was thought to be a terrorist. (screen capture: Channel 2)

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower court’s acquittal of two men over their roles in the fatal 2015 lynching of an Eritrean migrant who was mistaken for a Palestinian terrorist.

Prosecutors had appealed against the Beersheba District Court’s 2020 ruling of reasonable doubt in the case against Yaakov Shimba, at the time an Israel Defense Forces soldier, and Ronen Cohen, who was an Israel Prisons Service officer.

However, justices Yosef Elron, Alex Stein and Gila Kanfi-Steinitz said there was no reason to intervene.

“We must be very cautious, as we are now required to be, years after the fact, in examining the actions of those involved in such an incident,” Elron said, noting that it came in the midst of a wave of terror attacks.

He said evidence indicated that it was “not lust for revenge that motivated them in their actions,” but rather that Shimba and Cohen felt were responding to an ongoing terror attack. Elron noted that the victim died of gunshot wounds he had already suffered from others when the two men beat him.

In the minutes after a terror attack at the Beersheba bus station on October 18, 2015, Haftom Zarhum, 29, an innocent bystander, was shot by two soldiers and a security guard who thought he was the perpetrator. As he lay bleeding on the ground, a crowd of angry passersby — believing him to be the terrorist — beat him, some of them delivering powerful blows to his head and pummeling him with a metal bench. He died hours later in a hospital, and an autopsy ruled that the primary cause of death was the gunshot wounds.

The terror attack was carried out by Muhanad Alukabi, 21, from an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev. He first opened fire with a pistol, killing IDF soldier Omri Levi, then took Levi’s service rifle and used it to wound 11 others. He was killed in a shootout with police after holing up in a bathroom.

Haftom Zarhum, 29, died of his wounds on October 19, 2015, a few hours after he was shot and beaten by a mob that mistook him for an assailant in the terror attack in Beersheba on October 18, 2015. (Courtesy)

Shimba, Cohen and two other men, who were caught on security cameras beating Zarhum, were accused of “causing injury with grave intent,” an offense potentially carrying a punishment of up to 20 years in jail. Unlike the two other defendants, they did not agree to a plea deal that would downgrade the charge and offer a relatively lenient punishment.

The indictment said that in the aftermath of the attack, Shimba kicked Zarhum in the head and upper body with force. It said Cohen threw a bench on him, and after another man removed the bench he took it and again dropped it on the prone man.

Cohen also shoved a civilian who asked him to stop his attack, according to the charges.

Despite the fact that Zarhum was already critically injured, Justice Aharon Mishnayot of the Beersheba District Court ruled in July 2020 that the pair’s argument — that they beat him because they genuinely thought he was the terrorist — was enough to merit an acquittal.

The two other defendants in the lynching, Evyatar Dimri and David Muial, were convicted in 2018 in plea bargains that downgraded their charges to “abusing the helpless,” a lesser crime carrying a maximum prison sentence of seven years.

Dimri was sentenced to four months in prison and Muial got 100 days of community service and eight months of probation and was ordered to pay NIS 2,000 (approximately $550) compensation to Zarhum’s family.

Memorial candles at a ceremony in Tel Aviv on October 21, 2015 to honor Haftom Zarhum, an Eritrean national who was killed in the Beersheba bus station attack. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

Zarhum’s family has sued the state for damages, claiming that negligence and failure to follow proper procedure caused his death.

The lawsuit, filed in 2016 at the Beersheba District Court, demanded NIS 3 million ($780,000) in compensation and that the National Insurance Agency recognize Zarhum as a victim of terror, entitling his family to additional state benefits.

The National Insurance Agency rejected recognizing Zarhum as a terror victim because the Eritrean had entered the country illegally.

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