The military court in Ofer prison a few weeks ago convicted the terrorist Malik Hamed of murdering Sergeant Eli Taharlev and wounding Sergeant Roi Sasson in a terrorist attack at the Ofra junction seven-and-a-half months ago.
The soldiers were rammed intentionally while guarding civilians and securing the bus stop and road.The terrorist's sentence will be given on November 22nd.
The terrorist, 23, was convicted of Taharlev's murder and three counts of attempted murder, including IDF Sergeant Sasson and other civilians standing at the station.He was also convicted of membership in Hamas and carrying out operations for it. The prosecution asked the judges to sentence the terrorist to two immutable life sentences and to compensate the families of Taharlev and Sergeant Sasson.
Avital, Elhai's mother, said: "In our last conversation before he was killed, he said to me, 'Mom, you know that I'll be very committed to the IDF; maybe there'll be a mission from which I don't return.'I was horrified by these words, but he said them calmly, clearly, and with the smile that characterized him.The world lost Elhai; he planned to go to a squad commanders course, and he probably would have gone on to become an officer. He had leadership, perseverance, and dedication, and this murder cut us all off. We won't see grandchildren from him anymore."
At the end of her speech she addressed the judges: "Make a decision in such a way as to make it clear that evil has no place and nowhere to be, and that it's impossible to give it any quarter. Make sure that the cowardly murderer who rammed into my son and killed him will never see the light of day and sitsin prison for the rest of his life, so that the world will be a better place."
Rabbi Ohad Taharlev, Elhai's father and head of Midreshet UAT Lindenbaum of Beit Or Torah Stone, said today before the sentence was handed down: "Elhai's murder hit the cornerstone of the family; not only Elhai was harmed, but all of us.We had a child until the day that he was murdered, and since then we have a story, we have a hole in our soul.I want to ask the court that this murderer, who comes to represents so much evil in the world, will never see the light of day.That evil and chaos represented by the murderer will have no place.I ask that in its ruling the court will confront the murderer and whoever sent him, and even more - that the sentence will hurt him, his emissaries, deterring others from harming the Jews.No pain we could deal them will equal our pain, but this decision will perhaps provide us some bit of light."
The indictment filed in May shows how the terrorist planned to carry out a deadly attack and take the lives of as many Israelis as possible, and how he embarked on several occasions with his vehicle to carry out a terrorist attack and find a target that he could kill.On the morning of the same day, 10 Nissan, April 6th 2017, the terrorist drove up and down the road searching the bus stops for Jews, and did not carry out the attack on people behind concrete blocks lest he fail in his plan, continuing his search for more convenient targets.
Finally, when he passed the Ofra junction, he noticed soldiers Taharlev and Sasson and other civilians standing at the station, swerved to the bus stop, entered a small opening between the traffic island at the junction and the concrete blocks, and directly hit the soldiers.