A Jaffa military court on Monday approved a plea bargain between the prosecution and the Duvedevan soldier, identified as N., who killed Sergeant Shachar Strug while playing with his weapon in March.
Inquiry commission members determined the direct cause of Sgt. Strug's death was the shooting by Sergeant N. with a pistol without a safety plug during training preparations while they were waiting in the unit's billet.
The team also determined there to be a lackadaisical attitude toward illegal weapon use among the fighting unit to which the two belonged, and apparently this was not a unique incident.
N. admitted to shooting Strug, and the prosecution charged him with manslaughter. In addition to his prison sentence, N. was downgraded from First Sergeant to private.
"The agreement, according to which our client will spend 18 months in prison, shows that the event was a tragedy and the fact that the cause was not that he was 'playing with weapons' but rather the unsupervised way that the soldiers were practicing in their unit," N.'s lawyers said.