The Lod District Court ordered Tuesday the release of a Jewish settler, who has been accused of killing Palestinian mother Aisha Rabi in light of the negligence in the work of judge advocates in Israel.
It decided upon a one-day delay the release of the Israeli teen to house arrest in order to give the prosecution more time to appeal the decision.
The court explained that its decision to release the defendant was made as a result of contradictions in the statements made by the prosecution to the court, regarding the results of the autopsy of the martyr's body, as compared with the report of the National Center of Forensic Medicine.
The Center submitted an opinion, stating that injuries found on Rabi’s head “do not correspond to the scenario of a blow from a stone,” which is how the 47-year-old mother of eight is believed to have been killed.
The Israeli settler is suspected of committing “the racially-motivated murder” of Rabi on October 12, when, according to the indictment, a number of settlers gathered on a hill near Route 60 in the central occupied West Bank.
The suspect “held a rock weighing close to two kilograms, with the intention of using it to harm Arab passengers, out of an ideological motive of racism and hostility toward Arabs everywhere”, the indictment states.
During the investigation, 16-year-old Jewish Israeli’s DNA was found on the stone which killed Rabi. He has been charged with manslaughter after being arrested last December and is suspected of committing “the racially-motivated murder.”
The court heard how he and several other students departed from the Pri Haaretz yeshiva (religious seminary) in the illegal settlement of Rehelim, adding that there are alternative explanations for finding the teen’s DNA on the rock.
Four other individuals were arrested in early January, and subsequently released.
According to Palestinian reports, Rabi and her husband, Yacoub, were driving when a group of settlers threw stones at their car. She was reportedly struck in the head with a stone and died shortly after while he was lightly wounded.
