A gag order was lifted Wednesday on public reports that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) arrested a third suspect in the murder of cab driver Gregory Rabinovich on May 10, 2009.
The suspect is Ahmed Wasef Abu Hanyani. He was arrested early Monday morning at the village of Araneh, north of Jenin in Shomron (Samaria).
The bound body of Ashdod resident Rabinovich, 56, was found in an orchard near Gan Yavneh on May 11.
Two other suspects – Muhammad Haldi and Muhammad Uda of Araneh, both 22, were arrested May 23. They admitted to murdering Rabinovich, and provided details of the murder that could only have been known by its perpetrators. The two re-enacted the murder for police investigators and were charged on July 9, 2009 at the Petach Tikva District Court.
Cruel murder
Haldi also admitted that following the murder, he and his comrades planned to kidnap a Jew who would serve as a bargaining chip if any one of them were arrested. Haldi admitted to planning numerous other terror attacks against Israelis.
Uda and Haldi confessed to Shin Bet interrogators that they had entered Israel illegally on May 10 in order to carry out a robbery in the Ashdod area. When evening fell, they entered Rabinovich’s taxi, and in the course of the drive decided to carry out the robbery. The three directed Rabinovich to a side road near Gan Yavneh, and asked him to stop. They then beat him senseless, robbed him of NIS 800 and put him in the baggage compartment.
They drove away in the cab, and after some time Rabinovich regained his senses and began shouting and trying to escape. They beat him again until he fainted, and then decided to kill him. They wrapped a shoelace around his neck, pushed pieces of cloth into his mouth and strangled him.
Rabinovitch was survived by his wife, daughter, and son-in-law Hanokh Pe’er. “Gregory never fought with anyone,” Pe’er said at the time, “and never insulted anyone... He refused to take Arabs, even if they offered to pay him three times the price.” The exception that he made to this apparent rule cost him his life.
Haldi said that the murder was a revenge attack for the death of a relative, Muhammad Abu Jahim. Israeli security forces killed Abu Jahim, a senior member of the Islamic Jihad terror group who was involved in coordinating suicide bombings, in February 2007.