Two Israeli teens convicted in beating, burning death of Palestinian

A Jerusalem courtroom convicted two Israeli youths Monday. within the grisly killing of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy whose slaying played in to a sequence of events in that led to last yr’s Gaza war. The unrest-crackdown dialogue between Palestinians and Israeli security forces has now been going on for well over a year.

In the first incident, a Palestinian with a knife allegedly tried to stab an Israeli civilian near the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, south of Jerusalem, but was shot dead by soldiers at the scene, she said. “I am afraid in that the court will release them (the suspects) in the end”.

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.

Mohammed Abu Khdeir was abducted outside his home in Shuafat in East Jerusalem and driven to a forest, where he was burned alive on July 2, 2014.

The judge found that the two youths beat Abu Khudair unconscious in the back seat while Ben David drove into the forest.

During the trial both minors testified that it was Ben David who got Abu Khdeir to be kidnapped by them.

While he was living, before a match lit and set him on fire among the minors helped douse Mohammad Abu Khdair, they added.

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.

Israel immediately blamed the kidnappings on militants from Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza, rounding up hundreds of suspected members in the West Bank.

Hamas condemned what it called an “exoneration” of Ben David. While the harshest penalty for murder for an adult is life in prison, there is no standard maximum sentence in Israel for minors convicted of the same crimes, said Mohanned Jabara, a lawyer representing the Abu Khdeir family.

A court in Jerusalem has convicted two Israeli minors in the killing of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy last year.

“What motivates this terrorism is objection to the existence of the state of Israel as the Jewish people’s national state”, Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting, according to a statement from his office. At least 100 Palestinians have been killed, including 65 said by Israel to be attackers.

Adnan Al-Husseiny, minister of Jerusalem affairs in the Palestinian government, talked to media after they found the body saying that this cruel murder of the child, burning him alive is cruel, and he remarked how the tension between Israeli and Palestinian would escalate quickly because of that. The Palestinians say the violence is rooted in frustration over almost a half-century of Israeli occupation and a lack of hope for obtaining independence.

“The verdict is a joke – the lawyer representing the murders was screaming at the judge and mocking him – it’s a jokes; a big lie”, said Aisha Abu Khdeir, an aunt of Mohammed. “I think they will say that they were insane and give them a year or two, that’s all”. “The whole system is corrupted and is working together against Palestinians, especially when an Israeli commits a crime against a Palestinian”.

Before this year, arsonists considered to be Jewish radicals torched a house in the West Bank in the Palestinian village of Duma, killing a toddler and his parents. Sentences in the trial are expected on January 13.

The ruling was welcomed by Israeli officials who stated that hate crimes would not be tolerated.