Wednesday, November 2, 2022, 10:24 The Supreme Court rejected the request by Nasser Naji Abu-Hamid for an appeal on the decision to deny him parole. Abu-Hamid requested parole on humanitarian grounds due to his terminal illness. He was convicted of several counts of murder and attempted murder, all of them in acts of terror. Among the murdered are Binyamin and Talia Kahane, Hy”d, and Gadi Rejwan, Hy”d. Abu-Hamid appealed to the Supreme Court after the Prison Service parole board and the Lod District Court rejected his request for parole.
In the Supreme Court decision, Justice David Mintz wrote, “[Abu-Hamid] is a mass-murderer who took the lives of innocents with equanimity and did not express any remorse or take responsibility for his acts, but rather took pride in them and continued to justify them. The petitioner was also very active in a negative manner regarding security within the prison walls, and his release poses a significant danger to the public. Therefore, there are no grounds for intervention with the ruling that his conditional release from prison is likely to critically damage public trust in the justice system, law enforcement, and deterrence, considerations that also fall under the category of ‘the public good.'”
Justice Mintz went on to emphasize the importance of recognizing the suffering of the bereaved families when considering whether or not to agree to the terrorist’s request: “The [Lod] District Court also extensively detailed the suffering of the families of the victims, which constitutes a highly important consideration in this matter, and the fact that the possibility of the release of the petitioner deepens the painful and bloody wound that was caused by the acts of the petitioner, and even undermines their personal sense of security, peace of mind, and stability. The [Lod] District Court correctly ruled that this is also a central consideration in the matter,” concluded Justice Mintz.
After the justices handed down their ruling, Honenu Attorney Ophir Steiner stated, “We welcome the Supreme Court decision that rejects the possibility of granting parole on humanitarian grounds to a terrorist who committed murder. In their decision, the Supreme Court upheld what the Lod District Court had ruled: The suffering of the bereaved families is a central consideration and it takes precedence over the suffering claimed by the terrorist. Likewise, public security and public trust in the legal system constitute a consideration. This is a very important decision for the bereaved families. We hope that this decision will console, as much as it can, the bereaved families whose wounds that had not completely healed were reopened.”
Abu-Hamid was convicted of several counts of murder and attempted murder, all of them in acts of terror. Among the murdered are Binyamin and Talia Kahane, Hy”d, who were shot near Ofra in 2000 while some of their children were with them in their van, and Gadi Rejwan, Hy”d, who was murdered in 2002 in the factory that he managed in the Atarot Industrial Zone. At the sentencing, the court called the terrorist a “killing machine” and sentenced him to seven life terms plus 50 years’ imprisonment.