The Military Appeals Court has granted an appeal by the Prosecution and stiffened the sentence of an Arab youth who maimed a Jewish woman in 2007. The attacker, Muhammad Alwahsh, threw a rock at the car the woman was driving in, hitting her face and seriously injuring her. She suffered damage to her vision and hearing, loss of sensation in half of her face and a loss of the senses of taste and smell.
According to the charge sheet Alwahsh, who lives in El Hader south of Jerusalem, and several other youths decided to hurt Israeli citizens. In one incident, they threw fire bombs and rocks at Israeli-registered cars but caused no damage or injury. In the 2007 incident, they threw rocks at cars near the northern entrance to the nearby community of Efrat.
The Judea Military Court originally sentenced Alwahsh to six years' jail as well as 18,000 shekels damages to the injured woman. Both the prosecution and the defense appealed the verdict. The defense asked to lessen the sentence, arguing that at the time of the attack, Alwahsh was five days shy of his 18th birthday and thus technically a minor. It also asked for a more lenient sentence on the grounds that the sum of monetary compensation Alwahsh must pay the victim is a large one.
The prosecution asked the court to make the punishment more severe, in view of the injuries caused.
The Military Appeals Court decided to lengthen the sentence to nine years and did not change any other components of the lower court's ruling. The court also noted that while the defendant was technically a minor at the time of the attack, he was very close to becoming a legal adult and must have been aware of the severity of his deeds and the danger involved.
The court noted that the pain and suffering that the victim suffered should be reflected in the sentence, as should the pain inflicted on the victim's family. “They suffer alongside her, day by day and hour by hour,” the court added.