OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — A Jerusalem district court has convicted the main suspect in the July 2014 murder of a Palestinian teenager.
The court convicted 30-year-old Yosef Haim Ben David on Tuesday of murder, rejecting a plea that he was not responsible for his actions.
Ben David is to be sentenced next month.
Two other Israelis have already been sentenced for their roles in the murder of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir in revenge for the death of three abducted Israeli teens earlier that summer. The Israelis snatched Khdeir from an east Jerusalem neighborhood, drove him to a Jerusalem forest and burned him to death.
The gruesome killing sparked deep outrage in Israel and was part of a series of events that helped spark the Gaza war later that summer.
The Israeli court ruled that the Jewish man found to be the ringleader of the beating and burning alive of the Palestinian teenager was sane and responsible for his actions.
Israeli settler Yosef Haim Ben David was found to have led the assault, but his lawyers had submitted last-minute documents saying he suffered from mental illness.
Tuesday’s ruling clears the way for him to be sentenced, with his conviction having been put on hold while the court decided on his sanity plea.
“The court has found that at the time he committed the offense, the accused was not psychotic, fully understood the facts, was responsible for his actions, had no difficulty in understanding reality and had the capacity to prevent the crime,” a statement from the justice ministry describing the ruling said.
In February, a court sentenced his two young Israeli accomplices to life and 21 years in prison for the killing, which was part of a spiral of violence in the runup to the 2014 Gaza war.
