The attorneys representing Yitzhak Rabin’s confessed assassin are reportedly planning to adopt a new strategy and argue that their client suffered from emotional disorders.
If this line of defense were employed, Yigal Amir could get a lighter sentence if convicted of assassinating Rabin.
Under the Israeli criminal code, a defendant convicted of murder can get less than a life sentence if it is proven that he or she suffered from emotional problems at the time of committing the crime.
But one of Amir’s attorneys, Jonathan Goldberg, said Wednesday he knew nothing of a new defense strategy.
Amir has told the court that he wanted to wound Rabin seriously, and thereby force him out of politics, but not to kill him.
In the latest court deliberations on Feb. 1, presiding Judge Edmond Levy ordered that Amir undergo psychiatric evaluations.
Those evaluations were being conducted this week.
In Jerusalem on Wednesday, about a dozen members of the Amir family and supporters held a demonstration to demand better prison conditions for Amir – as well as for his brother Hagai and for a friend, Dror Adani, both of whom have been separately charged with conspiracy in the Rabin assassination.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
