Father and son, a Jewish convert to Islam, indicted on terror charges

Police officers and Shin Bet agents arrested a father and his son along with another man suspected of plotting several terror attacks, including a nightclub shooting and the murder of an Israeli Air Force pilot, law enforcement officials said Sunday.

The three residents of East Jerusalem — Walid and Nidal Shaheen, father and son, and their neighbor Yousef Abu Taha — were indicted Monday on a litany of terror-related charges after being arrested in late June.

The foiled terror plots represent “one of the gravest and most complex incidents to occur recently in the Jerusalem District,” said police Superintendent Nadav Kogen in a statement announcing the arrests.

According to Hebrew reports on the investigation, the father is an Arab Muslim who married and fathered his son with a Jewish woman, from whom he later separated. Jewish by virtue of his mother, 21-year-old Nidal converted to Islam after failing to qualify for a combat role in the IDF.

After his rejection, his father reportedly persuaded him to join him and take up terrorism, teaching him how to shoot from the roof of their home in East Jerusalem’s Kafr Aqab.

Walid, 43, had previously carried out a shooting at Qalandiya checkpoint in early 2023, according to prosecutors, in which he fired dozens of bullets at security forces stationed there and then fled the scene, evading arrest.

Together with his son, he manufactured explosives in apartment buildings which the two used as bombmaking labs, enlisting the help of their 23-year-old neighbor Yousef Abu Taha, who was also arrested and indicted alongside the pair.

The two face charges of weapons offenses, weapons trafficking and conspiracy to commit acts of terror including aggravated murder.

The father, accused of maintaining contact with a Hamas operative over the Telegram messaging app, was also charged with contact with a foreign agent and a terrorist act of sabotage with aggravated intent, due to his attempted shooting attack at Qalandiya checkpoint.

The third defendant, Abu Taha, was accused of helping Walid prepare explosives and subsequently hiding them in his home. He also sought to stage a shooting attack against security forces who entered Kafr Aqab to carry out arrests.

The joint police-Shin Bet investigation was opened after the father reached out to an undercover cop, nicknamed “Matrix,” with an offer to sell him explosives intended for terror attacks.

Footage obtained by the Kan public broadcaster showed Walid speaking to the undercover cop at an unknown date, vowing that the “next October 7 will come from Qalandiya and Kafr Aqab.”

He was arrested alongside his son by the Jerusalem District police investigations and intelligence unit. Officers seized bombmaking materials, ammunition and ready-to-use pipe bombs in the apartment raids.

According to the indictment, father and son plotted to murder an Israeli Air Force pilot near his home in Modiin, known to Nidal from a gardening job he took up in the city. They allegedly sought to attach pipe bombs to his car and gathered intelligence on his house and its surroundings to this end.

Nidal also planned to go off on his own to shoot up a night club in Rishon Lezion, choosing the location due to the fact that “many Jews congregate there and that he would succeed in murdering many people quickly,” prosecutors claimed.

Prosecutors added that the “complex and extensive investigation” into the conspiracy uncovered “severe and dangerous security activity.”

“The scope of the activity, the level of sophistication and the quantity of materials uncovered all attest to an exceptional level of danger posed by those involved,” read a Monday statement from the Jerusalem District Attorney’s Office.

A police investigator involved in the case told the Ynet news outlet that the probe is “one of the most serious cases we’ve handled in the unit,” saying the arrest of the three suspects prevented a mass casualty attack.

A prosecutor’s declaration was filed against the three suspects on Sunday afternoon, and the three were charged the next day in the Jerusalem District Court.