The Be'er Sheva Magistrate's Court decided on Thursday to send the Jewish youth suspected of stabbing four Arab men in the southern town of Dimona last Friday for psychiatric observation.
Judge Ya'akov Danino made the decision after a psychiatric evaluation determined there is a reasonable basis to suspect the youth was in a psychotic state at the time he conducted the stabbings. After the attack, the youth was quoted as saying he thought all Arabs were terrorists.
The suspect's lawyer, Attorney Itamar Ben-Gvir, said, "unfortunately the concern is being verified and there is no doubt that the minor was sick at the time he conducted the act, and also under the influence of drugs. The minor isn't responsible for his actions."
Ben-Gvir criticized the police decision in the previous hearing determining that the youth is suspected of a murder attempt, particularly in light of the attorney's office decision on Thursday to charge the rock-throwing Arab terrorists who recently murdered a Jewish man in Jerusalem as "manslaughter," and not murder.
"Even if the minor was psychologically fit, there was no call to use the murder attempt clause, but in any event today it is already clear that the legal defense will be on (the stabber) not being psychologically sound," he added.
The stabbing, which took place after a long string of Arab terror attacks nationwide that have escalated since, occurred in Dimona last Friday morning.
An Arab Israeli Bedouin worker at the Dimona municipality was first stabbed and moderately wounded, after which three Arab construction workers, who were Palestinian Authority residents working in sovereign Israeli territory illegally, were stabbed and lightly wounded.