Israeli minors who helped kill Palestinian teen to be sentenced
State prosecution seeking life for two teens convicted of kidnapping and brutally murdering 16-year-old Muhammed Abu Khdeir
The Jerusalem District Court will hand down sentences Thursday for two minors convicted last year of abducting and murdering a Palestinian teenager in a grisly revenge attack.
The state prosecution is demanding life sentences for the two, aged 15 and 17, for kidnapping Muhammed Abu Khdeir, 16, from an East Jerusalem street in 2014 and subsequently beating him and burning him alive in a nearby forest.
The names of the two have not been released for publication because they are minors.
Another man, Yosef Haim Ben-David, 31, was also convicted in the attack, but has not yet been sentenced while the court considers his claim that he suffers from a mental illness and was not responsible for his actions at the time.
Police say Ben-David led the attack on Abu Khdeir, which shocked the country and led to several days of Palestinian street violence.
On Tuesday a hearing was postponed to allow a full psychiatric review to asses his insanity claims. The hearing, originally set for Wednesday, will now take place on February 11.
Abu Khdeir was abducted and killed on July 1, 2014, two days after it emerged that three Israeli teens who had been abducted three weeks earlier in the West Bank had been killed by their Palestinian kidnappers shortly after their disappearance.
The violence was a major contributing factor in the breakout of a war with Gaza war that followed just a week later.
Hussein Abu Khdeir, the father of the murdered teen, called Tuesday for Israeli authorities to destroy the homes of the murderers in keeping with the policy of demolishing the homes of Palestinian terrorists.
Abu Khdeir said that if the government would have demolished the homes of his son’s killers, the Dawabsha family would not have been murdered in the July 31, 2015, firebombing attack in the West Bank village of Duma.
“I ask that you give them the harshest punishment, demolish their homes, just as they do for Arabs,” he said in court, according to Channel 10. There must be equality in punishment. If they would have demolished their homes, the Dawabsha family would not have been burned. Light sentences encourage them to commit these sorts of attacks.”
Right-wing Jewish extremist Amiram Ben-Uliel was charged earlier this month with murder for having carried out the attack which killed three members of the Dawabsha family. The sole surviving member, five-year-old Ahmed, is being treated for severe burns in an Israeli hospital.
The court’s actions are being closely watched at a time of renewed Israeli-Palestinian tensions. A wave of Palestinian knife, gun and car-ramming attacks targeting Israelis began in October.
AFP and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.