Israel’s top court has rejected a request to reduce the sentence of an Israeli imprisoned for gunning down Palestinian laborers in 1990.
An attorney for Ami Popper had argued that his client’s sentence should be lessened on the grounds of temporary insanity.
But the High Court of Justice rejected that request Sunday.
Popper, now 27, is serving seven life sentences for shooting seven Palestinian workers with an assault rifle in May 1990, near the town of Rishon le-Zion, southeast of Tel Aviv. He wounded 10 others.
Popper’s attorney, Zion Amir, argued that at the time of the shooting, his client, then 21, was suffering from post-traumatic stress because he had been molested by an Arab when he was 13 years old, two weeks before his Bar Mitzvah.
But psychiatrists who examined Popper soon after the killings determined him to be fit trial.
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