Family slams IDF court for refusing death penalty for son’s Palestinian killer
The family of an IDF Duvdevan soldier, murdered in May by a marble slab dropped on his head by a Palestinian, slammed the Judea Military Court on Wednesday for refusing to consider the death penalty as the trial opened.
Standing outside the court, Vladamir Lubarsky, father of murdered soldier St.-Sgt. Ronen Lubarsky, said that the court’s indication that it could not consider the death penalty was “a disgrace beyond words.”
He added, “The judicial establishment has put itself above the political establishment and decided what will be even before the trial opens.”
The family’s lawyer, former IDF West Bank chief prosecutor Maurice Hirsch, said that the call for capital punishment was simple and straightforward to deter future attacks on soldiers.
Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman has championed the idea of capital punishment for Palestinian murderers for years. But to date, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sided with the legal establishment, which is unanimously opposed to the death penalty.
In July, the IDF West Bank prosecution filed an indictment for murder against Islam Yusuf Abu Hamid for killing Lubarsky.
During the interrogation by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) of Hamid, a 32-yearold resident of the Am’ari refugee camp in Ramallah, they concluded that he had thrown the slab that hit Lubarsky from the roof of a nearby building.
Israel will continue to bring to justice anyone who attacks or tries to attack Israeli civilians or IDF soldiers, Netanyahu said following Hamid’s arrest in mid-June.
“A Duvdevan soldier is the one who was killed, and Duvdevan is the unit that apprehended the terrorist,” Netanyahu said.
Duvdevan is an elite counter-terrorism commando unit.
Lubarsky, who was from Rehovot, was seriously wounded when he was hit on the head by a slab of marble during an operation aimed at arresting a terrorist cell involved in recent shooting attacks.
The soldier, who was part of the operation’s covering force, received initial emergency medical attention in the field and was transferred to intensive care at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem, where he succumbed to his wounds two days later.
Anna Ahronheim contributed to this report.