An appeal on Thursday by an Israeli convicted in the 2015 firebombing attack that killed three members of a Palestinian family in the West Bank, including a baby, was denied by the Israeli Supreme Court.
According to Israeli news website Haaretz, Amiram Ben Uliel was convicted in May 2020 of three counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder in the 2015 attack on the Dawabsheh family while they were sleeping in their home in the West Bank town of Duma, south of Nablus.
Ben Uliel’s claim that he was interrogated under torture by the Shin Bet, was rejected unanimously by judges presiding over the case. He claimed that his subsequent confessions and reconstruction were illegal, an allegation that was thrown out by the judges.
Two of Ben Uliel’s confessions were rejected by the district court, but one confession obtained from him three days after the incident was found admissible and turned into key evidence against Ben Uliel.
In their decision the judges wrote that Ben Uliel’s actions were “shocking” and that “their seriousness speaks for itself … it seems that no derogatory word can reflect the extent of their horror. [The actions] contradict all the values of morality and Jewish culture, which teaches patience and tolerance.”
They added, “Courts will show no patience for lawbreakers, especially when the offenses are committed with an ideological-racist motive.”
In 2015, Ben Ulliel threw a firebomb into the Dawabsheh family’s home while they were sleeping. This killed 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh and critically wounded his parents, Sa’ad and Raham, who died several weeks later in the hospital. Their son Ahmed, then 4 years old, survived with severe burns.
