Israel’s Jerusalem district court sentenced 14-year-old Palestinian, Ahmad Manasra, to 12 years in prison on Monday.
Manasra was convicted of ‘attempted murder’ for carrying out a stabbing attack on October 12, 2015 that left two Israelis injured. The court also imposed a fine on his family of 180,000 shekels ($47,187).
The teenager’s lawyers presented an appeal to the court in May, saying that Manasra was not planning to murder the two Israelis, but to injure them. The judge rejected the appeal, and convicted Manasra of two counts of attempted murder and one count of arms possession.
An Israeli court in Jerusalem sentenced 14 yr old Palestinian Ahmed Manasra to 12 yrs in prison today. pic.twitter.com/7FrFMbLv1p
— Ramy Jabbar (@Ramdog1980) November 7, 2016
Tariq Barghouth, Manasra’s lawyer, said that the court was “unjust in its sentence against a child who has been treated like a criminal in a country that claims democracy.”
Manasra and his 15-year-old cousin Hassan Khalid Manasra stabbed and critically wounded two Israelis, near the illegal Israeli settlement of Pisgat Zeev in the Beit Hanina neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem.
During the attack, Hassan was shot dead by Israeli forces, while Ahmad was knocked over by a car and seriously wounded.
In video footage obtained by Ma’an a month after the attack, Israeli officials were captured on film screaming at Manasra, insulting him and trying to coerce a confession by calling him a “liar”. Mansara responds by saying: “I will say that I did this, but I don’t remember. I’ll say that I did it, what more do you want from me? I’ll say I did this.”
Manasra was interrogated without the presence of a lawyer.
(MA’AN, MEMO, PC)
