Man jailed for 7 years for stealing equipment of slain soundman from Nova festival site

The Beersheba Magistrate’s Court sentenced a man on Wednesday to seven years in prison for stealing sound equipment worth about half a million dollars from the site of the Nova music festival days after Hamas massacred hundreds of people there on October 7, 2023.

The Southern District Attorney’s Office announced the sentencing of Ram Shaheen on the third anniversary of the deadly Hamas invasion.

Prosecutors said that Shaheen stole some of the equipment and retrieved some of it from police by pretending to be an associate of its owner, Matan Lior, who was killed while helping others flee the music festival, according to the statement from the district attorney’s office.

Shaheen even visited Lior’s mourning family while the equipment was in his possession, prosecutors said.

He and an accomplice, Daniel Hasson, twice traveled to the festival site, once just two days after the massacre, in order to steal equipment that belonged to soundman Lior, according to the indictment.

Shaheen was convicted of aggravated theft and fraudulent gain. In addition to his prison sentence, he was given 12 months’ probation and ordered to pay an NIS 60,000 ($19,600) fine. He was also ordered to pay NIS 75,000 ($24,500) in damages to Lior’s family and NIS 25,000 ($8,200) to Lior’s business partner Amitai Nahum.

Hasson accepted a plea deal and was convicted of attempted fraudulent gain. The court sentenced him to 40 months in prison and ordered him to pay a NIS 30,000 ($9,800) fine, as well as NIS 40,000 ($13,000) in damages to Lior’s family and NIS 15,000 ($4,900) to Nahum.

Another accomplice, Sun Tevel, was convicted of assisting theft, also after accepting a plea deal. His sentence will be handed down at a later date, prosecutors said, after he told the court he couldn’t attend Wednesday’s sentencing for medical reasons.

Shaheen, Hasson and Tevel were arrested in November 2023 along with two other suspects.

At the time, Lior’s father, Ofer, said that his son’s wallet and ID card were also stolen in the chaos after the massacre, and that police had returned them to him.

He said the thieves had personally known his son and had attended his shiva — the seven-day Jewish mourning period — to console the family.

They “hugged me and said they share in my grief,” Ofer said at the time. “I never thought they could do such a thing. It saddens me that they knew him and did what they did.”

The three men were not the only ones who were caught taking advantage of the deadly violence of October 7.

In January of this year, three people were sentenced for descending on the site of the Nova festival on October 8, 2023, and looting abandoned belongings.

The three, Liran Yakubov, Netanel Aviv and Oz Ruham, all from Beersheba, were fined and given prison terms of between 36 and 40 months.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.