Bus stabbing.
Bus stabbing.Flash 90

A person whose identity is not known succeeded in approaching Hamza Mohammad Hassan Matrouk – the terrorist who stabbed 12 people in Tel Aviv last week – as he lay in a hospital bed at Wolfson Hospital.

"Smile for the camera, you %&@#... okay... yes... that's it,” says the man as he records a 6-second video segment. The terrorist scowls.

The fact that someone who presumably is not a member of the security forces was able to approach Matrouk is seen as an embarrassing security breach.

Police blamed the Military Police for the snafu, saying they were in charge of securing the terrorist.

The stabbing rampage took place Wednesday morning inside the #40 line bus. The terrorist stabbed the driver first, and this prevented the driver from opening the bus's doors to let the passengers escape. He then stabbed passengers and when they succeeded in opening the doors, got off the bus with them and stabbed at least one more woman from behind.

According to police, a team from the Israel Prisons Service's elite Nachshon unit happened to be driving behind the bus when the attack took place. The officers got off the car and gave chase to the terrorist, shot him in the leg and arrested him. He is 23 years old and a resident of Tulkarem in Samaria, who was in Israel illegally.

Late last year, Minister of Public Security Yitzhak Aharonovich recommended that security forces shoot dead terrorists on the scene of attacks. While this statement was received warmly by many nationalists, Arab MKs and leftists pounced on Aharonovich for allegedly sanctioning extrajudicial executions, and since then, security forces' policy appears to have changed, with soldiers and police loath to kill terrorists, even when their own lives are in danger.

Some security experts say it is better to catch terrorists alive and interrogate them, because this often leads security forces to their accomplices and handlers. However, terrorists like Matrouk are not part of an organization. Matrouk said he was spurred to action by television reports about Operation Protective Edge.