Palestinian Gets Life for Killing Jewish Family
A Palestinian man has been sentenced to five consecutive life sentences for the murder of five members of the Fogel family.
Hakim Awad, 18, was sentenced Tuesday in a West Bank Military Court. He had previously admitted guilt in the murders, and had refused to express regret. The judges called the attack “an atrocious, bone-chilling and terrifying act,”
Israel does not have a death penalty, though the judges said in their decision that they had deliberated on sentencing Awad to death. “A case such as this tempts the use of such a punishment,” the judges wrote in their decision. “The imprisoned criminal, whose life would be taken after being sentenced to death, might turn into a martyr, a shaheed in their terms, with all the meanings that are attached to it.” The five consecutive life sentences are equal to 130 years in prison.
Awad and his cousin, Amjad Awad, 19, murdered Udi Fogel, 36, Ruth Fogel, 35, and their children Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and Hadas, 3 months in a March 11 Shabbat eve attack on their home in Itamar in the northern West Bank.
Three of the Fogel children survived the attack; two were sleeping in a side bedroom and were not discovered, and a daughter was out of the house at the time of the killings.
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