Rafi Levengrond; Photo credit: Yonatan Zindel Flash 90
Monday, November 11, 2019, 13:05 On Tuesday, November 12, at the Shomron Military Court in Salem, the verdict will be handed down in the case of the mother of the Barkan terrorist who murdered Kim Levengrond-Yehezkel, Hy”d, and Ziv Hajbi, Hy”d. The military court convicted the mother of failure to prevent the attack. Members of the Levengrond family and Honenu Attorney Chayim Bleicher, who is assisting the victims’ families, will be present.
Honenu Attorney Chayim Bleicher: “When we read the bills of indictment and examine the investigatory material, we discover, to our surprise, that the ‘lone terrorist’ is surrounded by a support network of terror, from his close family to dozens of accomplices that assist the terrorist to escape and equip him in preparation for the next attack. In order to prevent the next attack we must leave the terrorist’s mother, who was aware of his destructive intentions and did not prevent the attack, in prison for many years. We hope that the military court will sentence the terrorist’s mother to many years in prison, and expect it to do so.”
The decision to convict the mother of the Barkan terrorist of failure to prevent the attack mentioned that, “In this instance, the value of human life overrides familial relationships.” Additionally, in the conviction, the President of the Military Court quoted an article by Professor Kremnitzer: “In the reality in which suicide terror attacks are not a rare sight, it is difficult to assume that the law would be willing to absolve from criminal responsibility a person (including a relative) who suspected a plot to carry out a suicide attack, refrained from verifying the suspicion and also refrained from reporting it [to the authorities]. Is the value of the lives of the victims not ten times the value of the freedom to act, [concern for] the discomfort and the emotional difficulty of the suspicious relative?”
The President of the Military Court explained that, “In my opinion, it is impossible to be satisfied with an ineffectual act which does not have the power to prevent the planned violation. An act genuinely capable of preventing the violation is required, and the act must be independent of the individual planning the attack. An attempt to persuade the intended perpetrator to refrain from acting is not enough, and neither is warning him.”
In conclusion, the President of the Military Court wrote, “The acts of the defendant, warning her son and informing his father, did not have sufficient power to prevent someone determined to lose his life while attacking Israelis, who possesses a weapon, from carrying out his plot. Moreover, the defendant did not ask the father to take the son’s weapon or report it to the authorities, and did not check with him [the father] about what had been done with the matter. There was nothing in her actions that was likely to prevent her son from implementing his plot, and therefore she should be convicted of the act attributed to her.”