According to the agency, the three said that Abu Khdeir’s slaying was in revenge for the abduction and killing of three Israeli teens – Eyal Yifrah, Gilad Shaar and Naftali Fraenkel – by Hamas operatives in the West Bank. A Jerusalem court did not identify the convicted murderers because they are minors.
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As NPR’s Emily Harris reports, a ruling on the accused ringleader, 31-year-old Yosef Haim Ben-David, has been delayed.
At a time of renewed if sporadic violence between Israelis and Palestinians, Al-Omari added that if Ben-David is ultimately found to have been mentally incompetent at the time of the attack, the “increased tension in the public mood is likely to incite further violence”.
Abu Khdeir’s father denounced the delay in the verdict for the man accused of being the ringleader and called for the trio’s houses to be demolished, as Israel does for Palestinian attackers. “I am afraid that the court will let them go in the end”.
“The court behaves one way with Arabs and another way with Jews”, Hussein Abu Khdeir told reporters outside the court, calling the last-minute psychiatric report by Ben-David’s lawyers a “trick” and asking why it was not submitted earlier.
Ben-David has not spoken in court but Muhammad’s family said he was clearly sane and appeared lucid in videos shown in court.
Ben-David had been declared fit to stand trial by a government-appointed district psychiatrist. The incident, carried out to avenge the deaths of three Israeli teenagers just days before, contributed to the breakout of the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict, which led to the deaths of over 2,300 people, mostly Palestinians. On the Israeli side, 73 people were killed, majority soldiers.
Until now, only the two minors were considered guilty. Israel has been up in arms since the European Union announced last month that goods produced in settlements must have special labels and can not say they were made in Israel.
His killers – two Jewish teenagers, also minors at the time of the attack – were found guilty of murder in an Israeli court Monday, and will likely be sentenced in January after a social worker reviews the case. Another one of his cousins, a 19-year-old who has the same name as him, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, has been held by the Israeli police since a July 28 protest.
Public prosecutor Uri Korb described the crime as barbaric.
This fall, violence between Israelis and Palestinians has escalated, and talks of a peace process between Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have all but ground to a halt.
The three Jewish suspects were arrested several days later.
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“You’d be hard pressed to find an example of terror in the world – outside of Israel – where mainstream media outlets prioritize the fate of the perpetrators over that of their victims”, said UK Media Watch.
