A lawyer for the confessed assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said this week that he had not yet decided how his client would plead to the charges against him.
“At this stage, it is hard for me to assess,” said Mordecai Offri, one of two lawyers defending Amir. “I must study the evidence.”
Yigal Amir was brought before a Tel Aviv court Wednesday to hear the charges against him.
The judge ordered the trial to begin Dec. 19. The court also ordered Amir to be held in detention until the end of the legal proceedings against him.
Three judges will hear the case. Israel has no jury system.
Amir, 25, smiles at his father and sister as the charges were read in the courtroom.
He was indicted a day earlier on charges that included premeditated murder. He faces life imprisonment if convicted.
Amir has confessed to the killing and expressed no remorse for his actions.
Yonatan Ray Goldberg, the second lawyer representing Amir, lives in the West Bank settlement of Emanuel. He moved to Israel from Houston seven years ago.
Amir is a “good man, not like the man portrayed in the media,” he told reporters at the courtroom.
Amir was also named in a separate indictment charging him, his brother Hagai and friend Dror Adani with conspiring to kill Rabin and with planning attacks on Arabs. Several weapons offenses were also listed.
The court ordered Hagai Amir and Adani held in detention until Jan. 7.
Explaining why Hagai Amir and Adani were not also charged with murder, Justice Minister David Libai said Yigal Amir had acted independently when he shot Rabin at a Nov. 4 peace rally in Tel Aviv.
“In the murder, they could directly accuse only Yigal Amir, because he acted alone,” Libai told Israel Radio.
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