The Tel Aviv District Court Tuesday handed out 26-year prison sentences to each of three defendants in the killing of Leonid Arik Karp on August 16, 2009.
Karp, who was 59, was taking a nighttime stroll on the beach with his wife and daughter, when he was accosted by a group of Arab youths who were drunk. The youths began to harass his daughter and when he told them to stop they began beating him savagely.
There were seven Arabs and two of their Russian girlfriends in the original group, but the court previously dismissed the cases against four of the Arabs and the two women.
Jamil Adas, Abdel Rahman Adas and a third youth, a minor whose name cannot be published, were convicted of manslaughter and not murder. The court explained that it cannot determine unequivocally whether Karp died of drowning or of a trauma to the head, but added that “in any case the direct reason for the occurrences is clear enough.”
The judges said the lawyers for the defendants successfully cast doubt on the direct connection between the actual attack and Karp’s death. They noted that the testimony by the wife and daughter had some flaws, but that they do not doubt their veracity.
Karp's widow Sarah was greatly pained by the decision not to convict the killers of murder. "If this isn't murder, what is?" she asked.