Yosef Tzuria, one of 27 indicted members of the Jewish terrorist underground, was sentenced today to six years in prison for his part in a conspiracy to blow up Islamis shrines on the Temple Mount.
Tzuria, a 25 year old resident of Ramat Hasharon, was convicted of having observed the Temple Mount in preparation for a possible attack and having posed as an officer in order to purchase s?lences for guns.
Three years of his sentence were suspended by Judge Yisrael Weiner of the Jerusalem District Court who said that in handing down sentence, he had weighed the seriousness of the crime on one hand, and the “defendants positive personal attributes” on the other hand.
It’s only a shame, the judge continued, that someone like Tzurio would get invotved in such a conspiracy. He said that among the reasons against being lenient were the potential damage to the state that might have been caused by such an attack on the Temple Mount, the effect it would have had on Moslems around the world and the need to deter others from repeating those acts in the future.
The court was surprised by the request of Tzuria’s lawyer Yaacov Rubin, who asked that his client be released on reserve duty next month, as “an act of repentance.”The request was denied.
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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.
