Palestinian indicted as accessory in fatal June terror attack
Prosecutors charge Osama Asa’ad with manslaughter for role in the shooting of Danny Gonen outside settlement of Dolev
Tamar Pileggi is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
A Palestinian man was indicted Monday for his role in the murder of Danny Gonen, an Israeli who was fatally shot in a June terror attack near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
Prosecutors charged Osama Asa’ad with manslaughter, arms trafficking, and possession of an illegal weapon, with the indictment maintaining the West Bank resident helped plan the attack and hid the murder weapon in his house afterwards.
Asa’ad, a former Palestinian prisoner who was released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal in 2011, was arrested last month along with four other residents of the Qalandiya refugee camp in connection with the attack.
Army Radio reported on Monday that military prosecutors would file indictments against the remaining suspects in the coming days.
In July, the Shin Bet security agency arrested Muhammad Abu Shaheen for Gonen’s murder. Shaheed is a 30-year-old Fatah member who regularly received a salary from the Palestinian Authority.
The agency said at the time that Abu Shaheen confessed to killing Gonen and to carrying out six other shooting attacks over the course of the past year, including an incident that wounded a soldier in Jerusalem’s a-Ram neighborhood last year.
The other suspects are Amjad Eduan, 35, a former security prisoner who provided Abu Shaheen with ammunition and served as a scout for other shootings and accompanied him on other aborted terror attacks; Ashraf Amar, 24, an active member of the PA’s military intelligence branch, who has no prior record but allegedly joined Abu Shaheen to carry out attacks that did not come to fruition; and Muhammad Eduan, 37, who also allegedly hid the weapon in his home.
Gonen, an electrical engineering student and the eldest of five siblings, was shot in the upper body at point blank range as he and a friend drove away from the Ein Bubin spring to the Jewish settlement of Dolev, northwest of Jerusalem.
Abu-Shaheen flagged down Gonen’s car in the vicinity of the natural spring, inquired about the water in the spring and then opened fire.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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