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Zeevi assassination mastermind Ahmed Saadat (AP)
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Rechavam Ze'evi, z"l
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Rechavam Ze'evi funeral (AP)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners April 27, 2006 |
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Israel's attorney general announced Wednesday he had failed to find the necessary evidence to try a senior Palestinian terrorist who spent more than three years in a Palestinian prison based on Israeli accusations he masterminded the assassination of a Cabinet minister.
After years of insisting Ahmed Saadat was behind the 2001 assassination of Cabinet minister Rechavam Ze'evi, the attorney general's inability to find the necessary evidence to put him on trial was an embarrassment, experts said.
Saadat, head of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was snatched from the prison in the Samarian town of Jericho during an Israeli military operation last month. Saadat's PFLP took responsibility for the assassination, saying it was in retaliation for Israel's killing of its leader.
Israel also hauled off four of Saadat's alleged accomplices in the assassination. These four suspects will be tried in an Israeli court in Jerusalem, the Justice Ministry said in a statement.
Saadat will be indicted and tried in a military court for other security offenses not related to Ze'evi's assassination, the statement said.
Moshe Negbi, an Israeli legal expert, said it was unclear to him whether the initial accusation of Saadat's involvement in the assassination was wrong or the current investigation was faulty.
"It is embarrassing," Negbi told The Associated Press. "It certainly looks strange."
A sixth suspect snatched from the Jericho prison, Fuad Shobaki, the alleged financier of an illegal weapons shipment to the Palestinians several years ago, will also be tried in a military court, the statement said.
Saadat and the other suspects had been held in the Jericho prison under supervision by American and British wardens under the terms of an unusual 2002 arrangement. Israel stormed the prison just after the wardens left.
The four suspect's in Ze'evi's killing will be tried in a civil court because immediately after the assassination, Israel captured two other accomplices and tried them in Jerusalem, the statement said.
"It should be remembered that beyond the act of murder and terrorism, this attack was meant to target a symbol of Israel's sovereignty in the heart of Jerusalem," the statement said. "As a result, there is symbolic importance ... in holding the trial in the Jerusalem District Court."
AP contributed to this report.
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