Reservist arrested for attempting to murder Arab passerby in Jerusalem
Shin Bet and police say 34-year-old suspect had racist motives, left house last month with rifle looking for Arab victim, but man he stopped managed to escape
An Israeli reserve soldier attempted to murder an Arab passerby for racist motives in Jerusalem last month and was arrested a week later, the police and Shin Bet security service said Sunday.
According to a joint statement by the organizations, the suspect, a 34-year-old man, left his house with his IDF-issued rifle late at night between August 9-10 looking for an Arab victim in the capital’s Park Hamesila, or Train Track Park.
Once he found a potential victim, the Jerusalem resident sat him down on a bench and began interrogating him while pressing his rifle to the victim’s body, the statement said.
After confirming that he was an Arab, the suspect cocked his rifle and tried shooting the Arab man, but the latter was able to push aside the rifle and escape unharmed. The Arab man then informed the police of what had happened.
The statement added that the suspect did not relent after the Arab man escaped and asked passersby where he could find Arabs. He eventually gave up and returned home.
The police and Shin Bet said they arrested the man on August 15. In his investigation, the suspect said he fired a “deterrence shot” toward the victim, but other testimonies gathered by investigators indicated otherwise.
The suspect’s detention was periodically extended under a gag order while the evidentiary basis for the investigation was being gathered, the statement said, adding that a statement by prosecutors was submitted on August 29 and an indictment is expected within days.
The security organizations said they viewed “with great severity threats upon the lives of innocents done for racist reasons and ideological motives by someone who was given a weapon for the purpose of protecting state security, and considers [such acts] to be acts of terror.”
