October 7 terrorists to be tried in special military tribunal, Attorney General’s Office agrees

After some two years of deliberations, the Attorney General’s Office announced earlier this week that the state’s prosecution services have agreed that a special military tribunal proposed in a bipartisan Knesset bill will be the framework for trying Palestinian terrorists accused of committing massacres and other atrocities in the October 7, 2023, invasion.

Various proposals had been considered for trying the assailants through Israel’s criminal prosecution system, but the Attorney General’s Office said that the prosecution services had agreed for the alleged perpetrators to be tried under the terms of the emerging Knesset law.

The Attorney General’s Office said on Monday night that this decision had been made in a recent meeting involving the attorney general, the state attorney and the IDF Military Advocate General.

Between 5,000 and 6,000 Palestinian terrorists, mostly from Hamas, but including other terror groups, invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, at multiple points on the Israel-Gaza border, and carried out a series of massacres in which some 1,200 people were killed.

These assailants also abducted 251 people as hostages and took them captive to the Gaza Strip, while also committing a wave of other atrocities, including rape and torture, and documenting the savagery on bodycams the terrorists wore during the attack.

Security forces captured approximately 300 of the invaders inside Israel following the attacks, and have held them in various detention centers since, with Israeli law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies deliberating over the last two years on how best to put them on trial.

Under legislation that has passed its first reading in Knesset and is currently being prepared for its final two readings, a special military tribunal will be established to try the terror operatives who allegedly carried out the October 7 atrocities.

The legislation was submitted jointly by Religious Zionism MK Simcha Rothman of the coalition and Yisrael Beytenu MK Yulia Malinovsky, of the opposition, and is being deliberated in the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, which Rothman chairs.

Under the legislation, the tribunal will be able to charge the assailants with all relevant crimes, including genocide under the terms of Israel’s 1950 Law for the Prevention of Genocide, harming Israeli sovereignty, causing war, assisting an enemy during a time of war, and terror charges under Israel’s 2016 law for combatting terrorism.

Those convicted of genocide charges would be liable to the death penalty.

Each case would be heard by a panel of three judges, in which the chief presiding judge would be a retired district court judge sitting alongside two other judges who are qualified to serve as district court judges and have expertise in criminal law.

Appeals could be made within the tribunal system to an appeals bench which would consist of a chief presiding judge who is either a retired Supreme Court judge, a retired district court president, or the president of a military appeals court.

Alongside that judge would sit two retired district court judges.

A key aspect of the trials will be that they are public and will be broadcast on a website set up for this purpose.

The legislation also stipulates that anyone who is suspected, charged, or convicted of October 7 crimes cannot be released through prisoner release agreements.