The United States Department of Justice will seek the death penalty for the terrorist accused of the targeted executions of two Israeli Embassy staff members in Washington last year, federal prosecutors announced in a court filing on Friday, according to The Associated Press.
Elias Rodriguez faces severe federal hate crime and murder charges for the ambush of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim outside a Jewish museum last May. According to the indictment, Rodriguez shouted anti-Israel slogans during the attack and later explicitly confessed to police, declaring his allegiance to Palestinian terrorist factions.
“I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza," Rodriguez stated to law enforcement following the shooting.
The victims, Lischinsky, an Israeli national working in the United States, and Milgrim, an American citizen, were a young couple who were preparing to celebrate their engagement.
Prosecutors noted that the inclusion of federal hate crime charges means the government will definitively prove that Rodriguez was driven by virulent antisemitism when he targeted the pair as they exited an event at the Capital Jewish Museum on May 21.
United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, announced the Justice Department's decision to pursue capital punishment with a severe warning to anyone contemplating ideologically driven terror in the nation's capital.
“My message to anyone who seeks to commit political violence in this district - DC is not the place. You will be held accountable and you will face the full wrath of the law," Pirro stated during a news conference on Friday, as quoted by AP.
Federal prosecutors have depicted the double homicide as a meticulous, pre-planned execution. Rodriguez reportedly traveled to Washington from Chicago specifically for the museum event, smuggling a handgun inside his checked airline luggage.
According to court records, witnesses observed the shooter pacing outside the facility before he aggressively approached a group of four individuals and opened fire. Surveillance footage captured a harrowing sequence where Rodriguez advanced on Lischinsky and Milgrim as they dropped to the floor, leaned directly over their bodies to fire final, fatal close-range shots, and reloaded his firearm before escaping the immediate scene.
(Arutz Sheva-Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)