Teen accomplice to deadly Duma arson attack on Palestinian family enters prison

19-year-old, who was a minor at time of 2015 attack, to be behind bars for remaining 10 months of three-and-a-half-year sentence

An Israeli teenager who was convicted of playing a part in a deadly arson attack that killed three members of the Dawabsha family in the West Bank village of Duma, on Monday entered Ma’asiyahu Prison, where he will spend ten months behind bars.

The rest of his three-and-a-half-year sentence was considered time served mostly under house arrest during the legal proceedings.

The name of 19-year-old, who was 15 at the time of the attack, is barred from publication because he was a minor at the time of the incident.

Last May he reached a plea agreement with the State Attorney’s Office in which he admitted to having planned the torching of the Dawabsha home, but murder charges were dropped.

In this screen capture from a YouTube video uploaded on March 16, 2016, Ahmed Dawabsha is seen recovering from his burns in hospital, holding a Real Madrid sign. (YouTube screen capture)

In October, the Lod District Court ruled that he was a member of a terror organization, tacking the additional charge onto his rap sheet, but he has yet to be sentenced on that score.

In July 2019, the court released him to house arrest, less than two months after it threw out several of his confessions because they were extracted under extreme duress by interrogators of the Shin Bet security service.

The main defendant in the case, Amiram Ben Uliel, was given three life sentences plus 20 years by the Lod District Court in September. He filed an appeal against the sentence at the Supreme Court in October, and in the meantime is incarcerated at Eshel Prison in the south of the country.

Amiram Ben Uliel in court on May 18, 2020. (AVSHALOM SASSONI/POOL)

In one of the most brutal acts of Jewish terror in recent years, Ben Uliel killed three members of the Dawabsha family — Saad, Riham, and their 18-month-old son Ali — in an arson attack. Only the couple’s eldest son, Ahmed, survived, despite terrible burns and scarring; he was 5 years old at the time.

Jacob Magid contributed to this report.

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