Taxi company owner, 2 drivers charged for causing death by taking terrorists to Tel Aviv

In what the State Attorney’s Office describes as a precedent, three people are indicted on charges of causing death by negligence and causing death by recklessness for driving Palestinians, who they knew did not have entry permits into Israel, across the Green Line, who then carried out a mass-casualty terror attack.

The indictments are filed against the owner of a taxi company, one of his drivers, and another taxi driver who worked in cooperation with that company after they drove two Hamas terrorists across the Green Line from East Jerusalem to Tel Aviv-Jaffa where they murdered seven people and injured 11 in one of the worst terror attacks in Israel in years.

The taxi company had started up a business illegally ferrying Palestinians from the West Bank into Israel who did not have permits to enter.

On October 1, the taxi company owner received a request to take 13 Palestinians without entry permits into Israel, including the two terrorists Mohammad Mesek, 19, and Ahmed Himouni, 25, both of whom were residents of Hebron in the West Bank.

The owner instructed one of his drivers to take the business even though he knew the individuals did not have entry permits when they both knew that “their entry into Israel was forbidden and in order to make money, while taking an unreasonable risk that the company [might be] giving taxi services to terrorists,” the State Attorney’s Office writes in the indictment.

The driver told the Palestinians who got into his taxi to turn off their cell phones and to draw the curtains in the rear windows of the vehicle. The terrorists wore black clothes unlike the other Palestinians who were being transported, and they had two backpacks with them, one which had a dismantled M-16 assault rifle and one which had knives and ammunition inside.

After crossing into Israel, the first driver had some of his passengers, including the two terrorists change taxis with a third driver connected to the company taking them onto Tel Aviv “because of his fear of police inspection.”

According to the indictment filed by the State Attorney’s Office, the terrorists originally planned to conduct their attack at a crowded venue such as a sports stadium, and while passing by Bloomfield Stadium in Tel Aviv, one of the terrorists asked the driver if there was a basketball game on that evening, ostensibly to see if he could carry out a mass-terror attack at the venue.

After the taxi driver dropped the terrorists off at a light rail station in Jaffa, one of the terrorists opened fire at pedestrians and commuters while the other stabbed his victims. Mesek was killed at the scene and Himouni was seriously injured.