Palestinian teen convicted in killing of Dafna Meir

An IDF court on Tuesday convicted 16-year-old Palestinian Morad Bader Abdullah Adais of the January killing of Israeli mother of six Dafna Meir.

Adais was convicted of murder and illegal possession of a knife.

He was arrested in the West Bank village of Beit Amra on January 19, two days after he killed Meir in the nearby Jewish settlement of Otniel. He confessed to the killing.

He was indicted in February on charges of murdering the 38-year-old mother of four and foster mother of two in the entryway to her home, located just south of Hebron.

Adais entered Meir’s home and killed her before fleeing the scene. Three of Meir’s children were home when she was killed, and one, 17-year-old Renana, gave security forces a description of the killer.

Morad Bader Abdullah Adais, convicted for the January 17, 2016 killing of Dafna Meir. (Courtesy)

The investigation indicated Adais waited for Meir to come out of her front door and then attacked her, “plunging the knife into her stomach.”

He then tried to retrieve the weapon in order to attack Meir’s children, but Meir wrestled with the attacker and prevented him from doing so, forcing the stabber to flee the scene.

According to the charge sheet, after fleeing Otniel, Adais returned home, washed the blood off his arms and watched a movie with his family.

Meir, who had been adopted as a teenager, worked as a nurse in the neurosurgery department of Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba. She was also a premarital counselor for brides.

Prior to carrying out the deadly attack, Adais watched “Palestinian television broadcasts which portrayed Israel as ‘killing young Palestinians,’” a statement from the Shin Bet security agency said after he was captured.