A Jewish suspect in the murder of on 11 year-old Arab girl in Nablus last Thursday was ordered released by a Netanya magistrates court today for lack of evidence. But the judge agreed that Ephraim Segal, a 26-year-old recent immigrant from the U.S., remain in jail two more days to allow the prosecution time to appeal the release order.
According to the judge, ballistics tests proved that the bullets fired into a bakery shop in the Nablus casbah, killing Aisha Al Bakhsh and wounding her nine-year-old sister, Fida, came from a different caliber weapon than the one owned by Segal. The judge also noted that Segal was not identified by witnesses at a police line-up.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Mordechai Eliahu, was sharply criticized today for a statement that could be interpreted as justifying the murder of the Arab child. According to Maariv, Eliahu told West Bank yeshiva students that whoever shot the girl should not be treated as a murderer but rather as a person who acted by the rule, “if anyone comes to kill you, you kill him first.”
The Chief Rabbi’s office claimed Eliahu was misquoted. A statement issued today said the rabbi was responding to a student who asked how a person should be treated who shoots in self-defense and accidentally hits an innocent bystander. “In such a case, the person shooting is not considered a murderer, ” the Chief Rabbi was reported to have replied.
The Arab girl was killed by an unidentified person chasing Arab youths who had stoned his car in Nablus.
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