Two Israeli youths who kidnapped and murdered the Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir in 2014 in the runup to the Gaza war have been handed lengthy jail sentences.
A court in Jerusalem sentenced the older of the two, aged 17, to life in prison, while the second, aged 16, was sentenced to 21 years for the murder that saw 16-year-old Mohammed grabbed outside a mosque, beaten and then burned to death in a forest outside the city.
The oldest of the two was given 28 years; the 25-year maximum life sentence for a minor with another three years added. The younger boy received a lighter sentence because the court ruled he was not involved in actual murder but took part in the acts leading up to it. Both sentences were unusually long for minors inIsrael.
Mohammed’s family were angry about the sentences, arguing that both should have been given life terms.
Neither of the teenagers, who are legally regarded as having been minors at the time of the murder, have been named.
The ringleader, Yosef Ben David, 31, has yet to be sentenced because the court is considerating a claim of insanity.
All three were found guilty by the court last November of murder and kidnapping. Mohammed, who lived in Shuafat, east Jerusalem, was kidnapped in the early hours of 2 July 2014, his abduction caught on CCTV cameras as he was bundled into a car.
His body was found in the Jerusalem forest not long afterwards, leading to a manhunt for the perpetrators.
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