Joshua Davidovich is The Times of Israel's Deputy Editor
The Times of Israel liveblogged Wednesday’s events as they unfolded.
The EU is joining Washington and the United Nations in condemning recently announced Israeli plans for new building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, saying it “threatens the viability of the two-state solution.”
In a statement, the EU’s External Action Service, its version of a foreign ministry, says the move “calls into question Israel’s commitment to a negotiated agreement with the Palestinians.”
“Despite repeated calls by the international community Israel is continuing its settlement policy, which is illegal under international law. The EU urges Israel to stop this policy and to reverse its recent decision,” the statement continues.
View of the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, in the West Bank, February 25, 2016 (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
On Sunday, Israel said it would push ahead with plans for some 560 new in Ma’ale Adumim, a West Bank settlement to the east of the capital, along with 240 homes in Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and another 600 in an Arab East Jerusalem neighborhood.
The move came in response to the killing of Hallel Yaffa Ariel, 13, who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian while sleeping in her bed on Thursday, and to the shooting of Rabbi Miki Mark and the injuring of his family as they were driving near Hebron a day later.
US State Department spokesman John Kirby on Tuesday called the plans “the latest step in what seems to be the systematic process of land seizures settlement expansions and legalization of outposts that is fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state solution.”
A day earlier a spokesman for UN head Ban Ki-moon said the secretary general was “deeply disappointed” by the announcement.
The head of Britain’s Iraq War inquiry has released a damning report on a conflict he says was mounted on flawed intelligence, was executed with “wholly inadequate” planning, and ended “a long way from success.”
Retired civil servant John Chilcot, who oversaw the seven-year inquiry, says “the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort.”
The 2.6-million-word report is an exhaustive verdict on a divisive conflict that — by the time British combat forces left in 2009 — had killed 179 British troops, almost 4,500 American personnel and more than 100,000 Iraqis.
Chilcot says then-prime minister Tony Blair’s government presented an assessment of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons with “certainty that was not justified.” He also finds military planning for the war and its aftermath were not up to the task.
“The people of Iraq have suffered greatly” because of a military intervention “which went badly wrong,” he says. But he refrains from saying whether the 2003 invasion was legal, and does not find that Blair and his government knowingly misled Parliament or the British public.
His conclusions are a blow to Blair, who told President George W. Bush eight months before the March 2003 invasion — without consulting government colleagues — “I will be with you whatever.”
The report says Blair went to war to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Britain’s main ally, only to find the UK excluded from most important decision-making about the military campaign and its aftermath.
“Mr. Blair, who recognized the significance of the post-conflict phase, did not press President Bush for definite assurances about US plans,” the report reads.
— AP
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Rwanda signing bilateral agreements with President Paul Kagame, the third stop in his four-nation Africa tour.
In recent years, Rwanda has been a staunch ally of Israel, notably abstaining, together with Nigeria, during a 2014 Palestinian statehood bid at the the United Nations Security Council.
Earlier in the day, Netanyahu was greeted by Kagame and a 100-man honor guard at the airport, then headed straight to the Kigali genocide memorial.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lays a wreath at the memorial for the Rwandan genocide in Kigali on Wednesday, July 6, 2016 (Raphael Ahren/Times of Israel)
Netanyahu and his wife Sara visited the museum, which is dedicated to the more than 1 million Tutsis who were murdered in 1994 by Hutu militias. Some 250,000 Tutsis are buried at the site of the museum.
Earlier this week, Rwandans celebrated Liberation Day, which marks the end of the genocide.
After visiting the museum, Netanyahu laid a wreath at a wall on the museum compound.
— Raphael Ahren
While at the Rwandan genocide memorial, Netanyahu and his wife Sara leave a message in the guestbook, saying the killing of some 800,000 Tutsis some 20 years ago bears resemblances to the Jewish people’s own Holocaust.
“We are deeply moved by the memorial to the victims of one
history’s greatest crimes – and reminded of the haunting similarities to the genocide of our own people. Never again,” reads the scrawled entry, tweeted out by the Rwandan president’s office.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu & First Lady Sara Netanyahu's message after touring the #Kigali Memorial Centre pic.twitter.com/V3R9FvfNFy
— Presidency | Rwanda (@UrugwiroVillage) July 6, 2016
— Raphael Ahren
Iran will not intervene in Bahrain despite a growing risk of internal conflict caused by the kingdom’s treatment of its Shiite majority population, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will not intervene in any way in the affairs of Bahrain,” Khamenei tells a gathering of top officials to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan, in remarks carried on his official website.
“But if political wisdom exists in this country (Bahrain), they should not allow the political conflict to transform into a civil war,” he adds.
Iranian Muslims perform Eid al-Fitr prayers in western Tehran on July 06, 2016. (AFP/ATTA KENARE)
Bahrain and its ally Saudi Arabia frequently accuse Iran, the region’s predominant Shiite power, of fomenting unrest in the tiny kingdom, which Tehran firmly denies.
— AFP
The Israeli military says it is looking into reports of a possible car-ramming attack at the southern entrance to Kiryat Arba.
There are no other details at this moment.
A Baghdad bombing claimed by the Islamic State group killed at least 250 people, officials say, raising the toll of what was already one of the deadliest attacks in Iraq.
A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle in Baghdad’s Karrada district early on Sunday as it teemed with shoppers ahead of the holiday marking the end of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, sparking infernos in nearby buildings.
Iraqi security forces keep watch on on July 5, 2016, at the site of a suicide car bomb attack which took place early on July 3 in Baghdad’s Karrada neighborhood. (AFP /AHMAD AL-RUBAYE)
Health Minister Adila Hamoud tells AFP that the bombing killed 250 people and wounded 200.
A police colonel and an interior ministry official both give even higher death tolls for the attack.
Hamoud says that DNA testing would be required to identify more than half of the bodies and that the process was expected to take from 15 to 45 days, meaning that relatives of the missing may have to wait weeks to learn the fates of their loved ones.
— AFP
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is calling on the UN Security Council to reject a key report by the diplomatic Quartet that condemned both Israeli settlement building and Palestinian incitement to violence.
Abbas says in a statement on Wednesday the report “does not further the cause for peace.”
“We hope that the Security Council does not support this report,” he adds.
Mahmoud Abbas, center, at Eid al Fitr prayers in Ramallah on July 6, 2016. (Flash90)
The report published last Friday by the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States was criticized by both Israel and the Palestinians as being unfair.
The report is due to be presented for discussion at the UN Security Council in the coming weeks, though a date has not yet been set.
Netanyahu has also rejected the report, calling it a “myth” that settlement building in the occupied West Bank is an obstacle to peace.
There is no formal response from the Quartet but a source involved with the report says there were positives to be drawn from the responses.
“If both President Abbas and Prime Minister Netanyahu find the report disturbing, then the report must contain some truths that both are uncomfortable with,” he says.
— AFP
The IDF now says the report of a possible car ramming near the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba was a false alarm.
Responding to the the damning Chilcot report on the UK’s involvement in the Iraq invasion, Tony Blair insists he acted in Britain’s “best interests.”
“Whether people agree or disagree with my decision to take military action against Saddam Hussein, I took it in good faith and in what I believed to be the best interests of the country,” he says.
Blair highlights there was no “falsification of intelligence,” though the inquiry found the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons “were presented with a certainty that was not justified.”
Blair repeats his contention that it was “better to remove Saddam Hussein” than allow the Iraqi leader to stay in power.
“I do not believe this (Saddam’s removal) is the cause of the terrorism we see today whether in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world,” he adds.
Then British prime ,inister Tony Blair meets soldiers at Shaibah logistics base, Basra, Iraq on December 22, 2005. (AP/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
UK Prime Minister David Cameron, responding to the report in parliament, says Britain should “learn the lessons of the report.”
What John Chilcot says about the failure to plan is very, very clear,” Cameron says, according to the Guardian.
“We can argue whether military intervention is ever justified and I think it is, but planning for the aftermath is always difficult. I don’t think in this House we should be naive in any way that there’s a perfect set of plans that can solve these problems in perpetuity – there aren’t,” he says.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn complains that the report took too long, and says the Iraq war fueled a rise in terrorism worldwide.
— Agencies
An IDF spokesperson denies reports in Lebanese media that Israel is shelling positions in the Syrian Golan Heights.
According to Lebanese news channel al-Meyadeen, seen as linked to the Hezbollah terror group, the IDF is shelling Syrian army posts near Quneitra, just across the border from Israel.
However, a spokesperson says “the IDF doesn’t recognize any attack” against Syrian outposts.
The report comes days after Israel said it shelled Syrian army positions in response to errant fire from the country’s civil war that struck near the border.
— Judah Ari Gross
US Secretary of State John Kerry has welcomed the Syrian army’s declaration of a 72-hour ceasefire but says he is working with Russia and others to transform it into a lasting truce.
“We very much welcome the Syrian army’s declaration of a period of quiet in celebration of Eid. We very much hope it will be honored by all parties,” Kerry tells reporters during a visit to ex-Soviet Georgia.
— AFP
Former defense minister and current Zionist Union MK Amir Peretz, speaking at an accountants conference, does a little accounting of his own, finding himself justified in his management of the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
“Looking back, the Second Lebanon War achieved strategic goals for the State of Israel, and successfully met the challenges we set for ourselves, and there it has proven itself. When looking at results, it was a success,” he says, according to the Ynet news site.
The war, in which thousands of rockets rained on northern Israel as the army Israel fought against Hezbollah for three weeks in southern Lebanon, was widely criticized afterward, including in the post-mortem Winograd Report which found widespread planning and strategic failures up the chain of command.
A French court has convicted seven young men who returned from weeks among the ranks of Islamic State extremists in Syria, including the brother of one of the suicide attackers who targeted Paris in November.
The defendants, aged 24 to 27, are sentenced to prison terms ranging from six to nine years for taking part in a group recruiting French jihadis, for joining a “terrorist group” in Syria in 2013-2014, namely IS, and for participating in military training and other activities.
Karim Mohamed-Aggad, brother of one of the extremists who attacked the Bataclan concert hall November 13, receives a 9-year term, the harshest penalty among the seven defendants.
The prosecutor said he was one of the ringleaders. Mohamed-Aggad claimed he went to Syria only for humanitarian purposes.
— AP
Three IDF soldiers have been lightly injured, and a Palestinian man is in serious condition after a possible terror attack near the Neve Daniel settlement, the army says.
Security officials are treating the incident as a suspected terror attack, though an army spokesperson could not specify what led them to this conclusion.
“A Palestinian rammed his vehicle into a military vehicle at the entrance to the community of Neve Daniel,” the army says in a statement. “Initial inquiry indicated the ramming was intentional.”
The soldiers were treated in the field, but the severely injured Palestinian man was rushed to an area hospital.
— Judah Ari Gross
Video from the scene of the possible terror attack shows an overturned army jeep and a sedan with its front smashed in, as soldiers collect information.
Route 60, a major north-south artery running through the West Bank, has reportedly been closed off around the scene of the crash.
Two soldiers have been taken to Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem with light injuries, according to Hebrew reports.
Responding to international criticism of his decision to approve hundreds of new housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects claims that it is damaging efforts to reach an arrangement with the Palestinians.
Building a few apartments will not prevent peace, he says.
Rather, Palestinian incitement and Ramallah’s refusal to relaunch direct bilateral relations are to blame for the absence of progress, he says from Kigali, at a press conference alongside Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
On Tuesday, the US harshly condemned the decision to approve some 560 new homes in the settlement of Maale Adumim and 240 more homes in Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, saying Israel was systematically seizing Palestinian land and calling into question Jerusalem’s commitment to a two-state solution.
Earlier Wednesday, the EU joined in, saying the move threatened the viability of the two-state solution.
— with Raphael Ahren
Netanyahu in Kigali also addressed the Rwandan genocide, saying the central lesson is that countries must always be able to defend themselves because the international community cannot be relied upon to come its rescue.
Speaking alongside Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Netanyahu points to Iranian threats against Israel, saying the world should speak out, but warning that they may be silent, as they were in 1994 as Hutus butchered 1 million Tutsis in Rwanda.
When the ayatollah calls for the destruction of Israel, the civilized world has to “speak up and alert the world,” the prime minister says.
“We have to be able to defend ourselves, by ourselves,” Netanyahu adds. “In Rwanda, UN peacekeepers failed to keep the peace. They failed to respond to urgent calls for salvation about impending genocide. They ran away. We cannot, either one of us, outsource our safety,” Netanyahu says.
Netanyahu also draws a line from the Holocaust to the Rwandan genocide, highlighting the fact that both were preceded by incitement to hate and dehumanization.
The Nazis dehumanized the Jews before the Holocaust; and the Hutus dehumanized the Tutsis before the genocide, Netanyahu says.
“Today Israel and Rwanda are successful states and models for progress. Both our peoples have learned lesson from past. Genocide is preceded by incitement to mass murder. Words matter. They have the power to kill,” he says.
The prime minister has in recent months championed a campaign against what he terms Palestinian incitement, which he says is fueling a wave of violence against Israelis.
— with Raphael Ahren
Belgium has handed over to France two men believed to have helped a key suspect in the November 13 Paris attacks flee to Brussels, Belgian federal prosecutors say.
Salah Abdeslam (left), suspected of involvement in the November 13, 2015 terror attacks in Paris with his friend Hamza Attou seen entering a convenience store at 9:45 a.m. on 14 November near the France-Belgium border. (Screen capture: BFM TV)
Mohamed Amri and Ali Oulkadi are suspected of helping Salah Abdeslam in the crucial hours after the massacre, which left 130 dead and hundreds wounded.
The pair allegedly worked with Hamza Attou, who has already been extradited.
“Within the framework of the Paris attacks of November 2015, Mohammed A. and Ali O. have been surrendered to the French authorities today,” a statement says, referring to the men only by their initials.
Amri and Attou are suspected of accompanying Abdeslam back to Brussels, getting him past three police checks in France before crossing the border into Belgium.
Oulkadi is thought to have then driven Abdeslam across Brussels on November 14, the last place the top suspect was traced before his capture in the Belgian capital four months later.
— AFP
In a speech, former British prime minister Tony Blair denies that there was a “rush to war” in the months before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
He says going to war had been the most “agonizing decision” he has ever made.
Blair says he takes full responsibility for the decision and that the British military and civil service are not to blame for the problems that developed after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair holds a press conference at Admiralty House, London on Wednesday, July 6, 2016. (Stefan Rousseau/Pool via AP)
The former leader says Britain had prepared for one set of facts on the ground after the invasion but found another as security in Iraq degenerated into sectarian violence.
“For all of this I express more sorrow, regret and apology than you can ever know or believe,” he says.
He concedes that intelligence assessments about Iraq had been incorrect.
— with AP
House Speaker Paul Ryan says it looks like Hillary Clinton got preferential treatment from the FBI in its investigation of the former secretary of state’s use of a private email server for government business.
Asked if she got special treatment, Ryan tells reporters: “Looks like it to me.”
US Speaker of the House Paul Ryan holds up a copy of the US Constitution during a press briefing on July 6, 2016. (Alex Wong/Getty Images/AFP)
He says there are a number of outstanding questions about the FBI inquiry. Director James Comey will be testifying Thursday before the House Oversight committee, and the House Judiciary panel has scheduled a hearing next week with Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Ryan has questioned whether Clinton should receive classified briefings as a presidential candidate in light of Comey’s rebuke of her handling of sensitive material.
— AP
A corporal who served alongside soldier Elor Azaria, on trial for the shooting death of a wounded Palestinian assailant, backs his former comrade and says he and others feel the state has sold the accused soldier down the river.
“If the terrorist had a bomb we would have died, and so Elor saved me and another 4-5 soldiers in the unit,” he testifies in Jaffa military court. “There’s a feeling that the state is not giving Elor support.”
Elior Azaria, an Israeli soldier on trial for manslaughter, with his father Charlie, at a military court in Jaffa, July 6, 2016. (Flash90)
At the same time, the soldier says he and other soldiers learned that they don’t need to worry about bombs in the Hebron region, where the March 24 incident took place.
“According to what we learned, there is no threat of bombs in Hebron. They never spoke to us about bombs,” he says.
Azaria, who was filmed shooting and killing a wounded Palestinian assailant who had just stabbed another soldier, has claimed in the manslaughter trial he fired the shot because he feared the attacker, who was unarmed, had a bomb.
The army says in shooting the attacker, Azaria did not follow procedure for a bomb threat.
Former US President George W. Bush is bicycling with wounded veterans on the same day a British inquiry has been released in London on the faulty intelligence and planning leading up to the Iraq War.
Bush spokesman Freddy Ford says Bush planned to spend Wednesday, his 70th birthday, at his Texas ranch riding his mountain bike with “wounded warriors.”
The British report includes former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s letters to Bush assuring him of his support before the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. In one letter, Blair urges Bush to go to the UN Security Council to build greater support for the war; in another he asks what provisions have been made for “avoiding civilian casualties.”
Only Blair’s letters to Bush, not Bush’s replies, were published.
Ford didn’t return messages seeking comment on the British report.
— AP
Democratic presidential also-ran Bernie Sanders was treated to a hearty Bronx cheer by fellow party lawmakers, as he refused to answer questions on when he will drop his quixotic bid for the nomination and back Hillary Clinton.
Sanders was grilled by House Democrats at a morning meeting, which those present say turned tense at times as the Vermont senator dodged saying when he would give up running for president.
Lawmakers shouted “timeline, timeline” at the presidential candidate.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks during a news conference outside his campaign headquarters in Washington, DC, June 14, 2016. (AP/Alex Brandon)
Sanders never answered, though at one point he said, “our goal is not to win elections,” then paused. During that pause, Sanders was booed, until he completed his thought by saying, “but to transform America” in order to win elections.
“My message was a simple message: We have got to fight for the needs of the middle class and working families of this country,” Sanders said as he left the caucus meeting, according to Politico. “We got to get people involved in the political process, we got to get a large voter turnout, and if we have a larger voter turnout, Democrats will regain control of the Senate and I believe they’re gonna take the House back.”
— with AP
British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has apologized for the Iraq war on behalf of his Labour Party after former Labour prime minister Tony Blair defended his actions despite a damning inquiry report.
“I now apologize sincerely on behalf of my party for the disastrous decision to go to war in Iraq,” Corbyn says after meeting families of British soldiers who died.
— AFP
Sweden’s migration board says it will not host migrants aboard a luxury cruise vessel owned by a US-based Swedish shipping magnate, claiming that he did not secure the necessary permits.
Authorities are facing an acute shortage of places for migrants after more than 163,000 arrived last year alone, forcing officials to lodge them in gyms, campsites and warehouses and even at unused nuclear fallout shelters.
Sweden had signed a deal with Floating Accommodations to lodge 1,800 migrants aboard the Ocean Gala, a floating hotel that was formerly a cruise ship called the MS Scandinavia.
“Our deal was dependent on the procurement of all of the necessary permits. This was not the case and the deal is therefore null and void,” said the official responsible for the project at Sweden’s migration board, Magnus Gustavsson, in a statement.
— AFP
In an apparent about-face, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has reportedly forbidden progressive Jewish movements from holding egalitarian services at the Western Wall on Thursday, Haaretz reports.
According to the media outlet, Mandelblit said he would no longer allow the services by the Reform and Conservative movements after a legal adviser for the Religious Services Ministry asked him to halt the planned prayer, which would be gender neutral.
The services were scheduled for 8:30 a.m. and planned to coincide with the new Jewish month. Mandelblit will not intervene in a separate service by Women of the Wall also planned for Thursday morning.
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men yell and protest the Reform and Conservative Jewish men and women as they hold a prayer service in front of the Western Wall, in Jerusalem’s Old City, on June 16, 2016. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)
A service by the progressive streams last month was not opposed by Mandelblit, though it drew violent protests from ultra-Orthodox worshipers at the site, the holiest spot where Jews can pray.
The move comes as liberal Jewish streams have protested foot dragging by the government in pushing ahead with a plan to create a new multidenominational prayer space directly south of the Western Wall plaza.
In response, the Reform movement says it will not break the law, but will still convene tomorrow at the Western Wall, as well as prepare a court challenge, Haaretz reports.
A spokesman for Republican Senator Bob Corker says he has withdrawn his name as a possible running mate for Donald Trump.
In this July 23, 2015 photo, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. walks on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
Micah Johnson confirms the comments that the Tennessee senator made in an interview with The Washington Post published Wednesday in which the senator said, “There are people far more suited for being a candidate for vice president, and I think I’m far more suited for other types of things.”
Corker is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He appeared with Trump at a campaign event in North Carolina on Tuesday.
— AP
One person has died and another is hospitalized after the two nearly drowned while swimming near Hadera, south of Haifa.
The two were rushed to a nearby hospital after being pulled out of the water.
The man, 25, was declared dead shortly after, according to press reports. A second man, 22, is in light to moderate condition.
An explosion on Wednesday that rocked a house used by refugees in a Turkish town near the Syrian border killed two people, the private Dogan news agency reports.
Two Syrians caught in the blast died in a hospital after the powerful explosion in the town of Reyhanli in southern Turkey, Dogan says. The cause of the explosion is not yet known.
A Turkish official tells journalists: “At this point I can only confirm that an explosion took place in Reyhanli.”
In 2013, twin car bombs in Reyhanli killed 46 people in attacks that were blamed on pro-Damascus forces. The Syrian government denied involvement.
— AFP
The government is reportedly pushing forward with a plan to funnel some NIS 50 million to Jewish settlements in the divided West Bank city of Hebron and Kiryat Arba.
The move, coming in the wake of two deadly terror attacks in the area last week, will likely raise new hackles in the international community, including the US, which harshly condemned an Israeli plan for some 800 new homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank on Tuesday.
The Hebron/Kiryat Arba plan, spearheaded by hawkish Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel, includes NIS 2 million for a heritage trail and new signage around the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a flashpoint holy site revered by both Jews and Muslims.
Israeli soldiers patrol the area around the entrance to the Kiryat Arba settlement in the West Bank on June 30, 2016, after a Palestinian teenager stabbed and killed a 13-year-old Israeli girl there. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)
The plan also includes NIS 6 million for new roads and infrastructure in the area, NIS 5 million for a bike trail, and NIS 3 million to refurbish an archaeological park, according to Channel 2.
“From the start of Zionism it has been clear that the Arab terror is beaten through settlement activities alongside security activities, that’s how it is around Gaza, that’s how it is on the northern border, and that’s also how it is the Hebron Hills region,” Ariel says, according to Walla News.
Last week, Netanyahu said he would push through approval for 46 new homes in Kiryat Arba, after a 13-year-old girl was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist in her home.
The area around Hebron has been a hotbed of violence amid a spate of terror attacks.
A French court has sentenced two former Rwandan mayors to life in prison for playing leading roles in the mass killing of ethnic Tutsis during the first days of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
A Paris jury has found Tito Barahira, 65, and Octavien Ngenzi, 58, guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity over the massacre of some 2,000 Tutsis who had sought refuge in a church in the eastern town of Kabarondo.
The prosecutor describes the two men as “monsters,” saying they were essential pieces in the local genocidal machine.
Dozens of survivors, relatives and witnesses, many of whom traveled from Rwanda, testified during the two-month trial. One survivor told the court she lost her seven children in the slaughter.
Both defendants denied any involvement in the murders.
The decision came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Rwanda, visiting a memorial to the genocide and comparing it to the Holocaust.
“We are deeply moved by this memorial to the victims of one of history’s greatest crimes and reminded of the haunting similarities to the genocide of our own people,” he and his wife, Sara, wrote in the visitors’ book.
He called genocide “a unique bond that neither one of our peoples will prefer to have” but said both countries have persevered to become “successful states and models for partners.”
— AP
