2 years jail for Palestinian who failed to report terror plot which killed teen
Khaled Koed convicted as part of plea deal in which he admitted to being told ahead of time about deadly 2019 bombing at West Bank spring
A member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group was sentenced to two years in prison Sunday for failure to prevent a 2019 terror attack in which an Israeli teenager was killed.
On August 23, 2019, an IED that had been planted next to the Bubin natural spring in the central West Bank, near the Dolev settlement, was triggered by terrorists as the Shnerb family from the central Israeli town of Lod visited the site. Rina Shnerb, 17, was declared dead at the scene and her father Eitan and brother Dvir, 19, were taken to a hospital in Jerusalem after being wounded by the blast.
Khaled Koed was sentenced by the IDF military court as part of a plea deal in which he admitted to having been told about the attack ahead of time by two members of the cell that carried it out.
The Shnerb family slammed the “lenient” sentence, saying in a statement that it would harm Israel’s deterrence.
“The court’s decision to approve the lenient sentence that the military prosecution sought to impose on the terrorist shames the soldiers who worked days and nights to arrest the terrorists and significantly harms the deterrence of the State of Israel,” the family said.
According to the Shin Bet security service, the explosive was planted at the site and triggered remotely by a cell belonging to the PLFP, led by Samer Mina Salim Arbid, who was arrested shortly after the attack.
During its investigation, the Shin Bet, working with the IDF and Israel Police, uncovered a large network of PFLP operatives, who also allegedly conducted shooting attacks against Israeli targets “and were planning to carry out other significant terror attacks in the near future,” the security service said. It announced in December that it had arrested some 50 members of the network in recent months.
Palestinian and Israeli rights groups have alleged that suspects were tortured after they were arrested in the aftermath of the attack. According to security sources, the Shin Bet was given permission to employ “extraordinary measures” during the interrogation of at least one of the suspects.
This is typically allowed in “ticking time bomb” cases where there is concern the suspect could provide security forces with information that could prevent an imminent attack.
