An armed court on Thursday has told Palestine who confessed to murdering 52-year-old Esther Horgen in a December 2020 terrorist attack.
Horgen’s body, recovered from a mother from the Tal Menashe settlement, was found a day after she went missing during a bog in the woods near her home.
Muhammad Mruh Kabha has suffered the assassination of Esther Horgen in December
(Photos: Horgen Family, Shin Bet)
Muhammad Mruh Kabha, 40, from the West Bank village of Tura al-Gharbiya near Jenin, was arrested four days later. Shin Bet’s security service said he was shot to kill Horgen and repeated his murder at the scene.
According to the conviction bill, which included six clauses, Kabha was gathering mushrooms in the woods when he saw Horgen.
After their stems crossed, Horgen started running and Kabha went after her, catching her after a short chase.
Kabha then grabbed her hands as she screamed, pushed him onto a clump of rocks and began to smash her head with one of the rocks until she stopped moving.
Horgen family in court
(Photo: Gil Nehushtan)
Palestine then returned home to change showers and clothes and fled to the mountains.
Kabha told the Shin Bet that he had snuffed into Israeli territory through an opening in the security fence, with the intention of carrying out a terrorist attack against Israelis in retaliation for the death of a friend who was serving a prison sentence there and Israel.
The conviction bill noted that Kabha was considering a number of options to counter the attack including a fire attack on Israeli security forces.
Kabha made several comments on security forces near the border fence but abandoned the idea due to the high cost of weapons.
Israeli security forces at the site of the assassination of Esther Horgen
(Photo: Ido Erez)
About a month later, he decided that Reihan Forest near the Tal Menashe settlement was a good place to attack Israelis.
Kabha’s family had petitioned the court against the plan to demolish the top two floors of the three-story home, alleging that the wife of the confessed terrorist and three children lived on the second floor.
The family said they were unaware of his plans to carry out a terrorist attack and could not stop him from doing so and argued that demolition as retaliation and punishment would therefore be illegal. .
Esther Horgen’s family at her funeral in Tal Menashe, December. 2020
(Photo: AFP)
In addition, the family told the court, that common punishment violated international law and even Jewish law.
They also argued that demolition was not a deterrent but instead averted revenge that led to further attacks.
But the three-judge panel ruled two by one that there was no reason to intervene in the IDF’s plan to partially destroy the home.
“The demolition of terrorist homes is a sensitive issue,” Judge Yitzhak Amit wrote as he rejected the family’s petition along with Judge Daphne Barak-Erez.
Esther Horgen’s funeral in Tal Menashe, December. 2020
(Photo: AFP)
“Demolition of a terrorist house is not a means of punishment, and revenge is not involved in response to the attack. Demolition of a terrorist house is used only as a deterrent and not as a means of punishment,” Amit wrote.
Writing against a minority against the decision, Judge Anat Baron said she believed the second floor of the house, where the wife and three children lived, should not be demolished. , but only the third floor used by him.
Yael Freidson contributed to this story.