Two Israeli Arabs, condemned to death for the murder of a Jewish hitchhiker in 1980, had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment yesterday. A five-judge military court of appeals in Lod ruled that the sentences imposed on Maher and Karim Yunis, both 26, should be amended because the death penalty has never been carried out in Israel — with the sole exception of Adolf Eichmann.
The prisoners, who are related and lived in Ara and Arara, villages north of Hadera, were convicted of murdering Avraham Bromberg after they gave him a lift in their car. They were escorted from the court-room yesterday shouting that they were innocent.
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