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Hussam Khader in prison uniform (hussamkhader.com)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners September 4, 2005 |
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An Israeli military court on Sunday convicted a Palestinian lawmaker of being a member of a terrorist group and helping to fund attacks on Israel, including at least one failed suicide bombing, the army said.
Hussam Khader, the 43-year-old lawmaker, reached a plea bargain agreement with Israeli military prosecutors and confessed to the charges, the army said. Khader has been a lawmaker since 1996.
Khader, who was arrested in March 2003, was convicted of helping to form a militant group in the area of the "West Bank" city of Nablus, helping to filter money to the group so it could purchase weapons and of failing to prevent an attack he knew was planned, the army said in a statement.
Khader's terror group sent two suicide bombers to an Israeli community in Samaria in January 2003, but the attack was foiled by Israel's security forces, the statement said.
Khader will be sentenced on Oct. 23.
A longtime member of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' ruling Fatah movement, Khader is a leader of the Fatah youth group and was arrested several times during the first Palestinian uprising in the 1980s for participating in the movement's activities. He was convicted only once and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Khader was also one of several hundred Palestinians deported by Israel in 1988 for his uprising activities. Khader returned to the West Bank in 1994 after Israel and the Palestinians signed an interim peace accord.
The IDF spokesman released the following statement Sunday:
"Today the Military Court of Samaria convicted Hussam Mahmoud A'Rahman Khader, a member of the Palestinian legislative council, on three different charges of security offences, following his confession to the charges. These consist mainly of the establishment of a terror cell in
Nablus and the transferring of funds to the cell for the purpose of acquiring weaponry. On January 2003, this same cell dispatched two terrorists to commit a suicide attack in an Israeli community in Samaria, an attempt which was thwarted by Israeli security forces."
"In addition to the charges above, Hussam Khader was also convicted of failure to prevent an offence, in that he was aware that terrorist operatives intended to commit a suicide attack in the Israeli community of Bracha, but did nothing to dissuade them from this objective and did not inform Israeli or Palestinian security forces of their intentions."
"In a plea bargain struck between the prosecution and the defense, Hussam Khader pleaded guilty on all charges against him. It should be noted that Khader is the highest ranking Palestinian official to confess transferring funds to Palestinian terror groups in order to finance
terror attacks against Israeli targets. Hader's sentence is scheduled to be handed down on October 23, 2005."
An international campaign has been set up to support his attempts to escape punishment. It is unclear how his guilty plea will affect the campaign.
The AP contributed to this report.
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