The court delayed ruling on the alleged ringleader, 29-year old settler Yosef Haim Ben-David for whom prosecutors sought a life sentence.
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Authorities believe Mohammed Abu Khdeir’s abduction and murder were carried out in retaliation for the deaths of three Israeli teens – who were kidnapped one month earlier.
The murders of the three Israeli teens and Khdeir were links in a chain of violence that led to the Gaza war in summer 2014 between Israeli forces and Hamas, which controls Gaza. He was bundled into a vehicle near his home, beaten unconscious, driven to a nearby forest and burned alive by Ben-David and two minors.
On July 2, 2014, Mohammed Abu Khdeir was abducted while standing outside a mosque in East Jerusalem. In July, the Knesset increased the punishment for Palestinian rock-throwers to up to 20 years in jail, and the Defense Forces have returned to a policy of frequently demolishing homes of Palestinian suspects’ families.
In the first attack on Sunday morning, an Israeli border police officer suffered light to moderate wounds amid a stabbing attack close to the Damascus Gate, the entry to the Old City of Jerusalem, in the east part of town, which Israel occupied during the 1967 Mideast War. The three suspects were arrested shortly after the July 2, 2014 abduction and confessed to the killing to investigators with Israel’s Shin Bet, the security agency said.
Asher Ohayon, Mr Ben David’s attorney, submitted at the last minute a psychiatric opinion which said he had not been responsible for his activities during the period of the homicide.
Sentencing terms for the two minors is expected in late December.
As the case unfolded, the three defendants turned on each other with the two minors attempting to place most of the blame on Ben David, who they said had given them pills before the killing.
“The court behaves one way with Arabs and another way with Jews”, he told reporters outside the courthouse, calling the last-minute psychiatric report by Ben David’s lawyers a “trick”. “It’s all lies and I worry that the court will free them in the end”. “It is our people’s right to defend themselves by all possible means”, said Abu Zuhri, adding that “everyone should bear the responsibility towards the organized terror of state that is practiced by the Israeli occupation”.
During the trial Israeli security services showed a video of the defendants practicing striking a potential Palestinian victim, filmed a few days before they committed the murder. “I think they will say that they were insane and give them a year or two, that’s all”. “The suspect can not get away with this crime, which he reenacted in detail for the police”.
Palestinians say the Israeli justice system is too lenient on Jewish attackers.
During the trial the two minors testified that it was Ben-David who persuaded them to kidnap Abu Khdeir.
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His father, Hussein Abu Khdeir, called the decision to delay a verdict for Ben-David a “crime”, and “utterly meaningless”, according to reports.
