BICOM

Two males convicted of murdering Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khedir in summer 2014, themselves minors at the time were yesterday sentenced to life and 21 years imprisonment respectively.

The gruesome murder, in which 16-year-old Abu Khedir was abducted from the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Shuafat, beaten and burned, shocked the country. Israeli leaders from across the political spectrum immediately expressed revulsion and unequivocal condemnation for the crime, which Israel’s Ministry of Defence has classified as a terror attack. The three people found guilty of the murder admitted that they carried out the crime as an act of revenge for the murder just days before of three Israeli teenagers, Eyal Yifrah, Gilad Shaer and Naftali Frenkel.

A Jerusalem District Court yesterday passed sentence on two of the murderers, whose identities remains anonymous as both were minors at the time of the crime. One was sentenced to life imprisonment, the other to 21 years in prison, spared a life sentence as according to the court, “he did not take part physically in the last stage [of the attack] that led to his [Abu Khedir’s] beating and the pouring of fuel or oil on his body.” Nonetheless, the severity of the sentences are rare for minors.

The third attacker, 31-year-old Jerusalem resident Yosef Haim Ben-David has not yet been sentenced as the court considers a plea of insanity. Ben-David was the only adult involved in the murder and appears to have been the ringleader.

Summarising their sentencing, the judges yesterday said that “The acts of the accused are extreme in their seriousness, prompting contempt and shock.” The State Attorney commented that “the verdict expresses the severity of the offences the minors committed – the murder of an innocent teenager around their own age, whose life was cruelly cut short.”