Jerusalem - An Israeli court Tuesday sentenced a Palestinian
militant involved in an assassination of an Israeli minister in 2001
to life and another 20 years in prison, Israel Radio reported.
Basil al-Asmar, of the radical left Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was convicted last month of murder,
attempted murder and membership in a 'terrorist organization,' for
his role in the assassination of then Israeli tourism minister
Rehavam Ze'evi and in additional attacks.
Al-Asmar helped plan and carry out the assassination in
Jerusalem's Hyatt hotel in October 2001, although he was not the one
to pull the trigger.
Hamdi Qur'an, another PFLP militant and the one who shot Ze'evi,
was sentenced in December to two life terms and another 100 years in
prison.
Reading out their sentence, the judges at the Jerusalem District
Court said the assassination of the minister constituted not only the
murder of a man, but also an assault on a 'symbol of the state and
its sovereignty.'
The PFLP's secretary-general, Ahmed Sa'adat, is still on trial in
Israel, accused of ordering the assassination.
Sa'adat, Qur'an, al-Asmar and two other members of the PFLP cell
which planned the killing of Ze'evi were nabbed by Israel in a raid
on a Palestinian Authority (PA) prison in Jericho in March 2006.
Israel said it launched the raid, which culminated in the
surrender of inmates after a more than nine-hour siege, after
learning the PA planned to release the Israeli minister's killers.
The assassination of Ze'evi, of the ultra-right National Union
faction, came in revenge for Israel's killing of PFLP leader Abu Ali
Mustafa in an August 2001 targeted Israeli helicopter strike in
Ramallah. That killing was in turn a retaliation for a string of bomb
and shooting attacks by the PFLP.
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