Court’s Ruling Against Terrorist Revives Debate over Death Penalty

The decision by a military court to impose a death sentence against an Islamic militant terrorist has revived a debate over the death penalty here.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has voiced his opposition to the death sentence handed down last week against Said Badarneh, a West Bank resident who was convicted of playing a key role in the April 13 suicide bombing of a bus in the central Israeli town of Hadera.

Five Israelis were killed in that attack, as was the suicide bomber allegedly recruited by Badarneh. Another 30 people were wounded in the explosion, for which the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas later claimed responsibility.

“Until now Israel has not executed a single Palestinian terrorist, and I think that was right. It would be a mistake to carry out a death sentence,” Rabin said last Friday.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres also criticized the sentence, saying he was “proud that Israel isn’t a nation of the gallows.”

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem echoed that stance, but a number of right-wing legislators urged that the sentence be carried out.

“Death should be answered by death,” said Rehavam Ze’evi of the nationalist Moledet Party.

The only person ever executed in Israel was Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who was hanged in 1962.

Another accused Nazi Collaborator, John Demjanjuk, was sentenced to death in Israel in 1988.

But the Israeli Supreme Court vacated the decision last year, finding reasonable doubt that Demjanjuk was the man known as “Ivan the Terrible” of Treblinka. The decision cleared the way for Demjanjuk to return to the United States.

Israeli military courts have imposed the death sentences in only two other cases, but both decisions were later converted to multiple life sentences.

The three judges in the Badarneh case wrote that they chose the death sentence because life sentences do not deter Islamic terrorists bent on killing Israelis. They also said that the 24-year-old Badarneh showed no remorse for the killings.

Badarneh, a member of Hamas’ Izz a-Din al-Kassam military wing, said Friday he was prepared to die and would not appeal the court’s decision.

An appeal could be made on his behalf by either the judge advocate-general or by the commander in charge of the central sector, Maj. Gen. Ilan Biran, under whose jurisdiction the trial took place.

Biran could also overturn the decision himself and sentence Badarneh to six life terms, the sentence reportedly sought by the prosecutors in the case.