Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
Amit Almog, who murdered his partner Maya Vishniak, at the Tel Aviv District Court in Tel Aviv, July 12, 2026 (Yehoshua Yosef/Flash90)
Amit Almog, who was convicted in December last year of murdering his partner Maya Vishniak in 2020, is sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay her family NIS 258,000 ($86,000).
Almog admitted having murdered Vishniak after originally pleading that he had committed the crime while mentally ill and therefore had reduced responsibility.
“It hardly needs saying how important deterrence is in general in cases involving violence against women, particularly with respect to the most serious offenses on the spectrum of criminal crimes, as in the present case,” writes Judge Gilad Neuthal of the Tel Aviv District Court in handing down the sentence.
Almog strangled 22-year old Vishniak to death at his Ramat Gan home in May 2020. He claimed for many years to have been mentally incompetent at the time he killed Vishniak, that he heard voices telling him to kill her, and that he had taken drugs at the time.
Only in December 2025 did he admit in the framework of an agreement with prosecutors to the charge of deliberate murder.
Maya Vishniak (Courtesy)
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From the Liveblog of
Sunday, July 12, 2026
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