Two Israeli Arabs were sentenced to life imprisonment last Thursday for the terrorist-related murder of an Israeli soldier, Moshe Tamam in August, 1984. The sentences were imposed by a military court in Lod on Ibrahim Razek Bayadsi, 26, and Ibrahim Nayef Abu Moh, 25, both from Baka el Gharbiya village near Hadera.
The accused had pleaded guilty, but justified their crime as a political act. Four other men arrested with them last March pleaded not guilty. They will be tried at a later date.
According to the prosecution, Bayadsi, Abu Moh and their alleged accomplices were ordered by the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to kidnap an Israeli soldier and bring him to Syria as a hostage for two Palestinian terrorists jailed in Israel.
Tamam was abducted and held for two days in a house near Baka el Gharbiya. He was shot to death in an olive grove near Jenin because his captors had difficulty taking him to Syria.
The trial was conducted under tight security. Several hundred soldiers and police had to guard the military court after relatives of the deceased and supporters of the extremist anti-Arab Kach Party threatened to attack the defendants.
Galia Tamam, mother of the murdered soldier, brandished a knife and threatened to stab any relatives of the accused permitted into the courtroom. Later she complained bitterly that the prosecution did not demand the death penalty.
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