Mob boss Yaniv Zaguri gets 3 life sentences for killing witnesses

Crime kingpin Yaniv Zaguri gets three life sentences for his involvement in the murders of a gangster-turned-state witness, his ex-wife and another prosecution witness.

Zaguri was convicted last month of the murder of his former right-hand man, Tal Korkus, Korkus’s ex-wife Devorah Hirsch and another witness for the prosecution, Elisha Sabah.

Korkus had testified against Zaguri in a 2008 trial that led him to serve seven years

In addition to jail time, Zaguri must pay compensation to the victims’ families amounting to NIS 774,000 ($246,730).

The mob boss was escorted into the courtroom under heavy security, reportedly with police snipers positioned on the roof of the court building. Channel 12 reports police have assigned the judge in the case Natan Zlochover heavy security following threats on his life.

Zaguri is sentenced alongside three others: his protege Arik Ital, implicated in the murders of Korkus and Sabah, who will serve two life sentences for two counts of premeditated murder, Moshe Rubin, and Amir Ben Shimol, both accomplices in Hirsch’s murder. The latter two will each serve one life sentence.

Rubin and Shimol gunned Hirsch down in 2016 in front of her three children, just before she was scheduled to meet with Zaguri in a bid to make amends. Sabah was murdered in a restaurant in Netanya in 2017, after he had testified against one of Zaguri’s gangsters.

Zaguri placed a hit on Korkus later that year. He was killed in a car explosion in Ashkelon.

The sentence handed down today caps off a trial that went on for more than seven years following Zaguri’s indictment. Zlochover describes the case as a “very bad crime film that is extremely difficult to watch, whose plot is written in blood by evil, anger and revenge,” in today’s sentence.