Alaa Ziad, who carried out a ramming and stabbing attack last November, will also have to pay victims hundreds of thousands of Shekels in compensaton; court says the ruling seeks to send a clear message and establish a deterrent.
Alaa Ziad, who carried out a ramming and stabbing attack on route 65 near Kibbutz Gan Shmuel in October, was sentenced to 25 years in prison Wednesday morning. Ziad will also have to compensate his victims between NIS 40,000-150,000.
Ziad ran over Orel Azuri and another soldier at a bus stop near the Gan Shmuel Interchange in his attack. A civilian who was in the area observed the incident and proceeded to subdue the terrorist with his bare hands. During his hearing, Ziad claimed that he did not carry out a terror attack but rather lost control of his car: “I did nothing. They want to turn me into a terrorist. I don’t know what they want from me. I am not a terrorist.”
Azuri, from Ramla, was severely wounded and underwent a number of surgeries. She has been recuperating for the past couple of months. She was serving in one of the Air Force’s Iron Dome units and at the time of the attack, and was returning to base from a training exercise.
“I was unconscious for 13 days, sedated and on a ventilator – teetering on the brink between life and death,” Azuri told Yedioth Ahronoth, Ynet’s sister publication, last November. “A miracle happened to me.”
Speaking about the attack, she said, “I felt the hit and was thrown several yards forward. The terrorist went over me several times with the car, and the next thing I remember is all the people around me in the hospital’s in intensive care unit. I was in shock. I woke up to a totally different reality,” she says.
Ziad was convicted of four accounts of attempted murder and wielding a knife for racist motives. According the indictment, Ziad was motivated by the clashes at the Temple Mount and decided to carry out an attack against soldiers and Jewish civilians. He was equipped with a knife and had walked around Hadera for a half hour before traveling the Gan Shmuel Interchange.
The indictment says, “The accused noticed the soldiers standing at the bus stop and decided to bring his plan to fruition and (attempt) to cause their deaths. Thus, he increased the speed of his car and aimed it towards the soldiers, knocking them into a ditch. His car came to a halt several dozen yards from the bus stop, and he got out of his car with the intention of continuing his plan. He noticed a young girl and then pulled a knife out of his car door and walked toward the bus stop. He approached the young girl and started stabbing her all over her body with the intention of killing her.”
At the time of the attack a passerby who noticed what was happening came to the rescue of the young girl. The terrorist tried to stab him too and succeeded. Nonetheless, the civilian fought back and the terrorist surrendered . Other civilians came to the scene and helped the first man hold down the terrorist until the police arrived.
Rivka Fuchs, Daniel Fish, and Yosef Elron, Haifa District Court judges, said in their ruling that the act deserves a severe punishment: “The defendant, who is a citizen of the state, decided to carry out a terrorist attack to murder Jews, only because they are Jews, by ramming passersbys to death with his car.” They added, “The crimes that he has been convicted of require a severe punishment to send a definitive message and (establish) a deterrent.”
As reported by Ynetnews