Israel on Thursday indicted the alleged Palestinian mastermind of a West Bank kidnapping which ended in the murder of three Israeli teenagers in June.
The abductions were part of the trigger for the recent Gaza crisis – the worst round of Israeli-Palestinian violence in years.
Hussam Qawasmeh, 40, is accused of raising money, planning the abduction and helping hide the teenagers’ bodies in a field he had purchased two months before, the Shin Bet internal security organization said.
In an indictment at the Ofer military court north of Jerusalem, Qawasmeh was charged with three counts of “intentionally causing death.” He had been arrested on July 11.
Two other men suspected of carrying out the abduction – Amer Abu Aisheh and Marwan Qawasmeh – remain at large.
Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16, were snatched on June 12 from a hitchhike stop outside a settlement bloc south of Jerusalem. They were then shot in the back of a car.
Their bodies were found 18 days later, buried under stones north of the Palestinian city of Hebron. Widespread Israeli searches and arrests in the West Bank prompted Gaza militants to fire rockets at Israel – violence which eventually spiralled into the recent 50-day Gaza war.
Qawasmeh, who was indicted Thursday, is from Hebron. The Shin Bet said he borrowed 220,000 Israeli shekels (61,478 dollars) from a brother in Gaza and used the money to buy two cars, two assault rifles and two pistols.
One car was allegedly used to abduct the three teens and then abandoned and burned, while another car was used to escape.
Immediately after the teens were shot, Qawasmeh allegedly helped transfer the bodies to the field he owns, where they were buried.
Qawasmeh planned to escape to Jordan, but he was arrested in the East Jerusalem refugee camp of Shu’afat on July 11, the Shin Bet said in a statement.
The location of Marwan Qawasmeh and Abu Aisheh remains unclear.
Hussam Qawasmeh’s brother in Gaza, Mahmoud Qawasmeh, who allegedly provided the money, had been serving a 20-year sentence in an Israeli jail for involvement in an August 2004 double suicide bombing in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba that killed 16 Israelis. But he was freed and sent to the Gaza Strip as part of a 2011 prisoner swap with the Islamist Hamas movement.
Other members of the Qawasmeh family have also served sentences for bomb attacks against Israelis on behalf of Hamas, Shin Bet said.
GNA
