Family of Murdered Israeli Demands Harsher Penalty for Killer

Family members have vowed to appeal the conviction of Noaf Bani-Uda, demanding that he receive far more than the six years in prison he was sentenced to last week for murdering Ben Yosef Livnat, H”yd. Bani-Uda was convicted of shooting at an unarmed individual and of tampering with evidence, but not of murder, in the incident in which the 30-year-old Israeli was killed. Along with his six-year prison sentence, he was ordered to pay a fine and court costs.

Livnat was killed when Palestinian Authority police opened fire on a vehicle he and other Israelis were riding in near Kever Yosef in Shechem. The military court that tried Bani-Uda said he was part of a group of shooters and that there was no way to prove that it was his shot specifically that killed the Israeli. Bani-Uda was the only PA policeman Israel captured and tried for the murder.

Attorney Chaim Bleicher of the Honenu legal rights organization, who has been representing the family, said that “the failure to convict this murderer of his crime is shocking, and is not at all based on the evidence. He specifically confessed that he shot at the vehicle the victim was riding in, and bullet casings indicated that the shots came from the group he was a part of.

“The court itself proposed all sorts of strange scenarios to excuse this terrorist, despite the fact that there is ample evidence to indicate that he was the only person to shoot at the vehicle,” Bleicher added. “We are waiting to appeal, where we can ensure that this terrorist gets what is coming to him.”