As the murder trial of Yigal Amir resumed this week, a police investigator testified that Amir had asked for cake and wine to toast Yitzhak Rabin’s death.
Appearing Sunday in Tel Aviv District Court, police investigator Moti Naftali said Amir had asked for the items to celebrate the news that Rabin was dead, Israel Radio reported.
Amir has already confessed to shooting Rabin at a Nov. 4 peace rally in Tel Aviv.
Naftali said Amir’s demeanor at the time of the assassination was as “cold as a fish” and that he showed no signs of regret for his actions.
At the start of Sunday’s hearing, one of Amir’s lawyers, Mordechai Ofri, announced that he was stepping down from the case.
Ofri explained the move by saying that “outside elements” were interfering in his preparing a case for the defense.
Meanwhile, Judge Edmund Levy told Amir’s other lawyer, Jonathan Ray Goldberg, that the line of defense he was building was “scandalous.”
The judge added that if Goldberg continued to try to get the trial postponed, he might have to pay expenses for the trial, which began Jan. 23.
Goldberg had wanted to delay the trial in order to wait the results of a state inquiry into security blunders that allowed the assassination to take place.
During Sunday’s hearing, the prosecution presented the pistol used in the assassination as well as a video re-enactment of the slaying.
Yoram Rubin, a Rabin bodyguard who was wounded in the shooting, was scheduled to give evidence Monday.
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.
