Uncle of Tel Aviv attack fugitive to be released
Other relatives of Nashat Milhem remain in custody; police say suspected shooter cut taxi’s cameras before killing cabbie

As the search for Nashat Milhem, the fugitive man suspected in last Friday’s deadly shooting attacks in Tel Aviv entered its seventh day on Thursday, the suspect’s uncle, who was picked up in connection with the incident, was set to be released from police custody.
Attorney Nechami Feinblatt, who represents the Milhem family, told the Ynet news site that he had reached an agreement with security officials on the release of the uncle of Nashat Milhem, 29, a resident of Arara in the north who has been on the run from police since allegedly shooting to death two people and injuring seven at a bar in central Tel Aviv and then killing a taxi driver in the north of the city.
The uncle was being held along with five more of Milhem’s relatives for suspected membership in an illegal organization and as possible accessories to the killings.
In the wake of the family members’ arrests, Feinblatt said on Tuesday that his clients had nothing to do with the attack, and that their arrest was a tactic being used by the security services in their search for Milhem.

“This is police helplessness,” he was quoted by Channel 2 as saying. “In the end they will arrest the whole family. This arrest was expected. The Shin Bet [security service] is under pressure. No one in the family has any connection to what the son did.”
Police say Milhem opened fire with a submachine gun at the Simta Bar on Tel Aviv’s central Dizengoff Street on Friday afternoon, killing 26-year-old Alon Bakal and 30-year-old Shimon Ruimi and injuring seven others. He then allegedly fired into two other establishments, fled the scene on foot, hailed a cab, and rode to north Tel Aviv, where he killed the driver before abandoning the vehicle.

After officially naming Milhem as the alleged killer of the driver, Amin Shaaban, 42, some 60 minutes after the bar attack, police on Thursday reported that they suspect Milhem disconnected the cab’s internal monitoring cameras before killing him.
Channel 10 quoted police as saying that there was no footage found on the cameras from Milhem’s suspected trip in the cab and Shaaban’s killing.
Raazi Shaaban, the taxi driver’s brother, accused authorities of failing to update the family on developments in the investigation into his brother’s killing.
“The police did not update us in any way,” Shaaban told Channel 2, adding that the family had only heard from the media that Milhem was also wanted in connection with his brother’s killing, although they had suspected he had been the killer.
Shaaban also criticized officials for not coming to visit the family as it was mourning Amin’s loss. “They went north [to victim Bakal’s family in Karmiel] and south [to Ruimi’s family in Ofakim], and in between they couldn’t stop by our place?” Raazi said.

Still, he expressed support for the law enforcement in the case. “The police could have told us earlier, but this is their job,” he said. “We can’t interfere in their work when it could jeopardize other things. I believe that they know how to do their job very well, both the police and the Shin Bet.”
As of Thursday, police were assessing that it was likely Milhem, the suspected shooter, has been hiding out in the West Bank, although most details of the search for him remain under gag order.
Feinblatt, the Milhem family’s attorney, said Tuesday that Mohammed Milhem, the suspected gunman’s father who is himself a suspect in the case, believed that his son was in the West Bank.