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Rights
Group Protests Israeli Court Pardon Of Jewish Killer
JERUSALEM, Feb 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Human rights groups on Sunday criticized an Israeli supreme court decision releasing a Jewish settler, Yoram Skolnick, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment eight years ago for the murder of a Palestinian man who had been tied up and shot in the back.
The court's decision comes less than a year after the same court ruled that Skolnick, convicted of murdering Palestinian Musa Abu Sabah in March 1993, was still a danger to the public and should not be released.
The Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, which has compiled a report on Israel's treatment of Arab and Jewish prisoners, denounced Sunday's ruling as "ridiculous."
"It is ridiculous and unacceptable that a man who was sentenced to life can be released after only seven and a half years," B'Tselem spokesman Tomer Feffer told news agencies.
"It is clear that all the authorities in Israel - the courts, the law ministry, the police, the army, all of them - discriminate against Palestinians and this is just one more example," he said.
B'Tselem denounced the ruling as an example of Israel "closing its eyes" to the deeds of Jewish settlers who kill Palestinians while imposing long prison terms on Palestinians who kill Israelis, news agencies reported.
"This is one example of dozens of cases in which the authorities discriminate blatantly and shockingly between Jewish and Palestinian murderers...Jewish murderers are given breaks by the police, the attorney-general and the courts," Feffer said.
Before Sunday's ruling, Abu Sabah's brother Shaaban condemned the murder. "A person whose hands and feet are tied, are you going to kill him?" he asked Israel Radio.
Skolnick shot Abu Sabah in the back near the Jewish settlement of Susya south of the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron after two settlers who said they found him carrying a grenade had captured him.
Skolnick, expected to be freed later Sunday, had already had his life sentence reduced. It was commuted twice by former president Ezer Weizman, and was due to serve another 11 years and three months, before the prison parole board decided to free him early for "good behavior".
The parole board decided to release him after serving only two-thirds of his sentence.
Skolnick's wife Sigalit was jubilant.
Sigalit Skolnick told Israel's Army Radio that her husband regretted the murder. She said he killed Abu Sabah in a "storm of emotion" and that he was now no longer dangerous.
"Today they release so many terrorists it can't be that they will leave [in prison] this holy Jew, who is our brother, who is part of the nation of Israel, and this the judges also understood," she said.
"True justice has appeared at the Supreme Court. This is a time of redemption, the Messiah is coming," she added.
Justice Minister Yossi Beilin said he was "uncomfortable" with the court's 4-3 ruling, saying he believed Skolnick was being released too early for such a "terrible" crime but that he nevertheless accepted the decision.
"It is a scandalous decision, a sad day for the justice system in Israel," said Arab Israeli MP Mohammed Kanaan of the United Arab List, complaining that the ruling reflected Israel's discrimination between Arab and Jewish prisoners.
The court is currently expected to rule on a petition by a human rights group to delay Skolnick's release. The group, the Public Committee against Torture in Israel, criticized the decision, saying it would send a very dangerous message to "ideological Jewish criminals".
The Palestinian rights group, LAW, said the court's decision encouraged would-be murderers instead of deterring them.
Providing further evidence in disparities in treatment of Arab and Jewish murderers, in January, B'Tselem and other rights groups voiced outrage at a Jerusalem district court decision to sentence Nahum Korman, a former security coordinator at a West Bank settlement, to six months community service over beating to death an 11-year-old Palestinian boy Hilmi Shusha four years ago.
Korman was convicted of second-degree manslaughter over the October 1996 killing. A coroner's report said Shusha had been severely kicked in the neck and died of a brain hemorrhage and broken spine.
The day of the Korman ruling, another Israeli court sentenced a Palestinian teenage girl to six and a half years in prison for lightly wounding a Jewish settler in a stabbing.
B'Tselem says it acts primarily to change Israeli policy in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, to ensure that its government protects the human rights of residents there and that it complies with its obligations under international law.
Throughout the years of occupation, Israeli authorities have been guilty of widespread and severe human rights violations against Palestinians, while at the same time have given preferential treatment to Israeli settlers, whose settlement in occupied territory is itself a breach of international law, B'Tselem said.
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