West Bank Resident Sentenced to Life Imprisonment in Grunzweig Murder

The Jerusalem District Court today sentenced Yona Avrushmi to life imprisonment for the murder of Emil Grunzweig two years ago during a Peace Now demonstration outside the Prime Minister’s Office.

The court found Avrushmi, a resident of the West Bank town of Ofra, guilty of murder after he threw a hand grenade into the crowd of demonstrators the night of February 10, 1983. Avrushmi’s lawyers said they will appeal the verdict.

Grunzweig, a 33-year-old teacher, was part of a protest outside from where the Cabinet was deliberating on the recommendations handed down by the Kahan Commission on the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps massacre in September, 1982.

The defendant was convicted basically on circumstantial evidence, with the prosecution failing to bring any solid, substantial evidence that Avrushmi was the murderer.

BASIS FOR JUDGE’S DECISION

In his decision, Judge Zvi Tal placed special importance on one brief passage in the testimony Avrushmi gave the police interrogators at the end of January, 1984, shortly after he was arrested by police authorities.

Asked why he had thrown the hand grenade, Avrushmi replied, “Why? — because I knew it was them or us. And I said to myself there is only one thing to do — scare them. That’s what will stop them. We have to really scare them.”

The judge ruled that Avrushmi’s testimony to the police was not made under duress. It was part of the con- sistent effort of plea bargaining, in which the suspect hinted he would tell all, if the charges against him were reduced from murder to manslaughter.

Although the prosecution provided no hard evidence to support its charges against Avrushmi, Tal found that there was enough circumstantial evidence to back up the prosecution’s case. The hand grenade purchased by Avrushmi was the same type used on the demonstrators, his uncompromising political opinions, and the fact that he was in Jerusalem on the night of the murder, were all elements in that evidence, the judge wrote in his verdict.

COURT SPLIT ON KEY QUESTION

The three member court, however, split on the key question — whether the attack was pre-meditated or manslaughter. Tal was convinced that Avrushmi wanted to intimidate the activists, but not harm them.

But Judges Eliahu Noam and Dr. Yaacov Bazak disagreed. Bazak wrote that since Avrushmi did not claim in court that he did not intend to kill anyone, the facts must speak for themselves. The facts are, he wrote, that a grenade was thrown into a group of people, it exploded, one man died — and nine others were wounded.

Avrushmi, wearing a yarmulka and sporting a bushy beard grown during the trial, told reporters outside the court that “I have been waiting for six months for the verdict. They had serious doubts. The verdict was not reached by them, but by higher echelons. I was not surprised. I Knew it ahead of time.”

The Peace Now movement expressed satisfaction with the verdict, but concern that the Israeli political system has not yet drawn the appropriate lessons from the murder.