A Jerusalem district court has appointed Itzhak Tunik, a well known criminal lawyer from Tel Aviv, to defend Michael Denis William Rohen, the 28-year-old Australian national charged with setting fire to the El Aksa mosque in East Jerusalem Aug. 21.
The accused has said he did not want legal counsel. He has refused to appear before a special committee inquiring into the causes of the fire even though several witnesses have incriminated him and he is entitled, under Israeli law, to question them. Mr. Rohen, reportedly a member of a fundamentalist Protestant sect, confessed to Israeli police that he set the mosque afire because “God told him to.” But he signed a paper waiving the right to appear as a witness or to question other witnesses.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
