A 28-year-old West Bank resident, Yona Avrushmi, has been arrested in connection with the grenade murder of Peace Now activist Emil Grunzweig in Jerusalem a year ago. Police sources believe there is sufficient evidence to bring him to trial and hope a formal indictment will be filed next week.
Avrushmi was identified at a nationally broadcast police press conference Friday as the prime suspect in the killing. Another man, David Shemtov, 20, of Jerusalem, was arrested on suspicion of selling Avrushmi the Israel army issue grenade that killed Grunzweig but is not otherwise implicated in the murder.
The police seem satisfied that Avrushmi acted alone and that no other person, groups or organizations were involved. The suspect was described as a deeply troubled man, a loner grieving for a brother killed in the Lebanon war. His brother-in-law was killed in the Yom Kippur War. Police said Avrushmi formerly lived in the Neve Yaacov quarter of Jerusalem and was a lock-smith by trade. Presently, he lives in Ofra, a Jewish town on the West Bank where he is employed at a local metal workshop.
The police claimed today to have a tape-recorded conversation in which the suspect admitted to an undercover agent that he threw the grenade which killed Grunzweig, a 33-year-old teacher, and wounded 10 other persons during a Peace Now demonstration for the resignation of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon outside the Prime Minister’s Office on February 10, 1983.
But Avrushmi has made no confession. The police admit he is not cooperating and his lawyer told reporters that Avrushmi complained of “police brutality” during his interrogration.
PROCESS THAT LED TO THE ARREST
The police press conference Friday was devoted largely to extolling the computer-assisted process that led to Avrushmi’s arrest. They said he was pinpointed after 180,000 names were fed into a computer and the numbers of nearly 9,000 hand grenades supplied to 40 army units. The computer-generated information was combined with the reports of detectives and undercover agents who have been working on the case for nearly a year.
The police press conference was presided over by Interior Minister Yosef Burg whose son, Avraham Burg, a member of Peace Now, was one of the wounded in the attack which killed Grunzweig. Burg said the police had “worked tirelessly, like ants” on the case. Nevertheless, the police were forced to admit that lacking identification by an eye-witness, the evidence against Avrushmi is circumstantial. They were conviced, however, that it was sufficient to satisfy the Attorney General and bring the suspect to trial.
Avrushmi is not the first man arrested in connection with the Grunzweig murder. Previous suspects have been released for lack of evidence. The failure to find the killer to date recently triggered demands for replacement of the police team originally assigned to investigate the case. Critics contended that the team deliberately ignored a possible eye-witness.
But Arvushmi’s arrest appeared to satisfy both left and rightwing elements among the public. Police sources did not link Avrushmi to any political or ideological group. They said, however, that according to his employer, he hated Peace Now and thought its members are “traitors.” But he condemned the Grunzweig killing, his employer told police.
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