Israeli court suspends case of Mohammed Abu Khdeir’s murderer

An Israeli court has suspended a trial against the main suspect in the last year kidnapping, beating, and burning to death of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir.   

On Monday, the court accepted a late insanity plea by Yosef Haim Ben-David’s lawyers and set a new sentencing hearing for January 2016.

During the hearing, the court acknowledged that the 31-year-old Israeli had committed the violent crimes but could not be presently convicted due to his mental state.

The court; however, found two other Israeli youths guilty of the horrific murder and announced that they would both be sentenced in mid-January.

Earlier in the case proceedings, a similar request had been presented to the court but was turned down over grounds that no evidence of insanity had been produced.

The verdict has sparked claims that Israel courts are too lenient with Jewish assailants.

Shocked about the ruling, mother of the victim, Suha Abu Khdeir, 45, said, “I hoped they all would get a punishment… It’s like they burned him again. This court is worthless. At the least they should be in jail until they die.”

 The victim’s father, present in all the hearings, denounced the verdict, saying it was all a “lie” and a trick by the murder’s lawyers.         

“If they were Arabs, their homes would have been demolished immediately,” he said. “I am afraid that the court will release them in the end.”

The Israeli regime routinely orders the demolition of the houses of those Palestinians whom it accuses of being involved in attacks against Israelis.

Apart from widespread international condemnation, the killing sparked multiple protests and clashes in the West Bank.

Abu Khdeir was abducted from outside his neighborhood mosque, driven into a forest, and beaten and then burned while still alive on July 2, 2014, just days before Israel’s devastating war on Gaza which claimed the lives of over 2,200 Palestinians and left over half a million more displaced.      

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