Terrorists who planned Mamilla attack sentenced

Two men who plotted to bomb the Mamilla outdoor mall in Jerusalem were sentenced on Sunday to long prison terms by the Jerusalem District Court.

According to the court ruling, the two men, East Jerusalem residents Ahmed Rishk and Ismail Abu Mefalfal, were arrested in September 2013. Both had worked as cleaning staff at the mall. They had planned to use their knowledge of the site to plant a bomb in a trash can during the Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) holiday season, and perhaps during the holiday itself, when they thought the stores would be filled with shoppers.

Rishk was sentenced to ten years in prison with another two-year suspended sentence, and Abu Mefalfal was sentenced to eight years in prison with a two-year suspended sentence.

According to the court ruling cited by Army Radio, Rishk and Abu Mefalfal, residents of the Shuafat and Ras al-Amoud neighborhoods respectively, were brought into the plot by Hamdi Romana, a 22-year-old resident of Ramallah, who asked for their assistance in carrying out a bombing attack and obtaining arms to use in attacking Israeli soldiers at the Anata checkpoint outside Jerusalem.

Rishk and Abu Mefalfal were caught in the summer of 2013 in a combined operation of the Israel Police, the Border Police, the IDF and the Shin Bet.

Gavriel Fiske contributed to this report.