The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) arrested two Palestinian men in June who are suspected of having taken part in the October 2000 lynching of two Israel Defense Forces reservists in Ramallah.
The suspects, Marwan Ibrahim Tufik Maadi, 51, and Yasser Ibrahim Mohammed Hatab, 40, admitted to participating in the lynching. On Sunday, the two men were charged in a military court in Judea on counts of voluntary manslaughter.
The men, residents of Jafna, near Ramallah, were detained during an operation against Hamas infrastructures in the Ramallah and Binyamin areas.
In October 2000, near the start of the Second Intifada, two IDF reservists, Cpl. Vadim Nurzhitz and Sgt. Yossi Avrahami, got lost and ended up driving into the outskirts of Ramallah. They were brought to a police station in Ramallah where they were brutally beaten to death by a mob.
The ISA said the arrests show that, even 12 years later, security forces are still working to bring all of the lynch participants to justice.
Avrahami’s son, Roie, who is now 17, said the arrests would not bring back his father.
“The loss is immense,” he said. “They found two of the participants, but I don’t feel relief.”
As part of the Gilad Schalit prisoner swap last October, convicted lynch participant Abd al-Aziz Salaha was released. Salaha become a symbol of the Second Intifada when he was photographed in the window of the police station with his outstretched hands covered in blood.
