Rabbis for Human Rights reports on attack, says it suspects a murder attempt linked to deadly July 2015 firebomb attack
The home of a key witness in the Duma terror trial was torched overnight Saturday, an Israeli human rights group has said.
At approximately 3 a.m. Sunday, “the couple in the home that was torched heard glass breaking, and quickly escaped, suffering only smoke inhalation. A loud boom was heard and the house went up in flames,” according to Rabbi Arik Ascherman, president of Rabbis for Human Rights, which has been a key group advocating for stronger action against Jewish settler violence in the West Bank.
Ascherman’s Facebook post about the incident includes photos that appear to show the contents of the house all but destroyed.
The residents of the torched home were not named.
According to RHR, the group suspects the attack is “an attempt to murder witnesses to the Duma arson murders this summer.”
In January, prosecutors filed indictments against two Jewish suspects, 21-year old Amiram Ben-Uliel of Jerusalem and an unnamed minor, in a July 2015 terror attack in Duma, near Nablus, that killed three members of a Palestinian family.
On July 31, a firebomb attack on the home of the Dawabsha family in the village led to the immediate death of toddler Ali Saad Dawabsha. Parents Riham and Saad succumbed to their wounds in the hospital within weeks of the attack. Five-year-old Ahmed, Ali’s brother, remains hospitalized in Israel and faces a long rehabilitation.
The indictments marked a key breakthrough in the case, which shocked Israelis and led to unprecedented measures against Jewish terror suspects, including a cabinet vote to extend to Israeli citizens counter-terrorism practices such as detention without trial.
As reported by The Times of Israel