An Israeli court has found Monday two Israeli teenagers guilty in the murder case of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, the 16-year-old Palestinian who was abducted, beaten and burned alive last year.
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Two Israeli teenagers have been found guilty of the abduction and murder of Palestinian teen Mohammad Abu Khdair in Jerusalem in 2014.
The Palestinian youth’s death triggered violent protests and was a milestone in an escalation of violence that led to the Israel-Hamas war.
The dad, who has attended the court proceeding, wondered why the Israeli military hadn’t ruined the houses of the minors and Ben David as Israel does with suspected Palestinian terrorists. And around another 100 Palestinians have also been killed, some as they attempted to carry out such attacks, and others in clashes with Israeli forces.
“EU, Israeli relations are good, broad and deep and this will continue”, the spokeswoman said. “When we try to claim we are better than our enemies … we will always have this incident as a mirror”, Corb said.
Outside the court, the victim’s father, Hussein Abu Khdeir, said the evaluation request “made a joke of the court” and said he feared Ben-David would be treated with leniency. “People started to scream ‘terrorist, terrorist, ‘ and I was afraid they would attack me”.
Meanwhile in the West Bank city of Hebron, the Israeli army shut down Dream radio station, the third private broadcaster it has closed there, accusing it of stoking the violence.
Haifa University legal expert Emanuel Gross said, that Israel has a mandatory life sentence for adults convicted of murder. The Israeli human rights law firm Yesh Din reported earlier this year only 1.7% of settlers are indicted for acts of violence against Palestinians and their property.
Prosecutor Uri Korb objected to the decision, arguing that he was in favor of reviewing the issue at an earlier stage, but it’s too late now since the trial was closed and the court had already drafted its verdict with only a few days before announcing it.
An aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said it was “unprecedented” for the court to accept the insanity plea the day of the verdict, rather than during the subsequent appeal.
Fatal shooting of 17-year-old occurs a day before expected verdict on burning death of 16-year-old Abu Khdeir in 2014. That evaluation inexplicably found Ben David was not responsible for his actions at the time of the murder.
After the European Union (EU) decision to label Israeli goods produced in the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the Foreign Ministry to suspend contacts with the EU over the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
The EU official in charge of trade policy admitted that a plan to label products from Israeli settlements could be “exploited politically”, ahead of a major row with the Israeli government.
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Four days later, police took six Jewish Israeli suspects for interrogation.
