JERUSALEM (JTA) — The son of a leader of a West Bank Jewish human rights group was sentenced to prison for the kidnapping and assaulting of a Palestinian teen.
Zvi Struk, 28, of the Esh Kodesh outpost near Shiloh, was sentenced Sunday in Jerusalem District Court to 18 months in prison. He also was sentenced to one year of probation and ordered to pay the victim more than $14,000.
Struk, whose mother, Orit, heads the Yesha Human Rights Organization, was convicted in November of three counts of assault, battery under aggravated circumstances and kidnapping for the purpose of causing grave bodily injury, as well as one count of animal abuse for killing a lamb.
In July 2007, Struck and an accomplice kidnapped a 15-year-old Palestinian boy, beat him and left him naked and tied up in an open field, according to the indictment. The youth managed to untie himself several hours later and return home. Struk also killed a lamb that the teen, a sheep herder, was watching.
"I reviewed the medical records and the difficult photographs that were taken of the complainant immediately after the event, and I cannot avoid expressing disgust and deep shock over the signs of terrible trauma that the minor suffered," Judge Amnon Cohen said in the courtroom.
Implementation of the sentence will be delayed while an appeal is filed, according to reports.
The teen was represented by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group that says that about 90 percent of complaints filed by Palestinians against Israeli citizens accusing them of harming Palestinians and their property end without an indictment.
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