Police have released the chilling testimony of the main suspect in the murder of Arab teenager Muhammed Abu Khdeir in Jerusalem on July 2.
“We were hot-headed and angry and we determined to burn something of the Arabs,” Yossef Haim Ben-David told police in his investigation, saying watching the funerals of three Israeli teenagers kidnapped and murdered in the West Bank on June 12 — Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-ad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach — had sparked their decision.
Ben-David said he and his two alleged accomplices, both minors, had first planned to burn an Arab store in the city but then “decided to raise the bar.”
One of the suspects in the murder of 16-year-old Muhammed Abu Khdeir is seen in security camera footage filling up a tankard of gasoline at a gas station, which was used to burn the body of Abu Khdeir a few hours later (Photo credit: Channel 2 screen capture)
“We said ‘they took three of ours, let’s take one of their’s,'” he explained. “We decided to pick someone up, kidnap him, beat the hell out of him and throw him out.”
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