The following story is almost unimaginable, and if it wasn’t written in black and white in the protocols of the military courts, it’s doubtful that you would believe it happened.
Walid Khaled Salah Odeh, an Arab from the village of Hawara, was convicted last week of throwing stones at soldiers in the village, but will serve a particularly light sentence – three months in prison. The reasoning for the plea bargain in which additional charges were deleted – the terrorist’s “clean past”.
However, the Jewish Voice monitoring revealed that this is a terrorist who was convicted ten months ago of another offense, and the military prosecution “eliminated” his criminal past and even a suspended sentence pending against him for a period of six months.
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Step 1: Spraying swastikas
To understand the seriousness of the affair, you have to go back ten and a half months. Odeh, a central instigator in the village of Hawara, was arrested when he sprayed swastikas on the main road in the village of Hawara. He was convicted a few days later in a plea deal for the offense of “violating public order”. The military prosecution then sought to be satisfied with the days of the arrest that he served and a fine of 1,000 NIS and a suspended sentence. Prosecutor Assaf Elad asked the court to approve the settlement, which he says is balanced due to Odeh’s clean past and the “absence of casualties and damage” from his actions.
However, Judge Zadeh did approve the plea agreement, but stated in the judgment that in his opinion, Odeh’s act also amounts to the offense of incitement, which is much more serious than the offense of violating public order. The judge ultimately chose to approve the plea agreement but to give a relatively heavy suspended sentence of six months for a period of three years, which will also include the offense of incitement and not only the offense for which he was convicted.
continued the incitement
Odeh, however, was not deterred by the light punishment. As we published in the Jewish Voice, his Facebook account is full of incitement to attacks and violence against Jews. About three months ago, Odeh, who works at a car wash in Hawara, was one of the dominant figures in the incitement surrounding the flag fights in the village of Hawara.
After publication in the Jewish Voice he was arrested, and last week the military prosecution reached a plea agreement with him. In the amended indictment he is accused that during the month of May, during a disturbance in the village of Hawara, he threw three stones the size of half a palm from a distance of about 150 meters at soldiers. The section of the law is “throwing objects at a person or property”.
At the hearing of the arguments for the punishment in which the plea agreement reached by the prosecution was presented, District Attorney Noi Konda said that she requests to sentence the defendant as part of the plea agreement to an agreed sentence of three months in prison to be actually served, a conditional prison term at the court’s discretion as well as a monetary fine of NIS 1,000 .
“The considerations taken as part of the settlement are, on the one hand, the seriousness of the offense,” the prosecutor added, “on the other hand, we considered the defendant’s clean past as well as his guilty plea, which saved valuable judicial time.” It was also said that there is an evidentiary difficulty in the case and they also considered the claim in “the great distance and the low potential for damage”.
His lawyer Khaled Mahajana even defined and described in the arguments for the punishment that “since this is his first offense, I will ask to give him an opportunity to return to his family and accept the settlement… he has never been in trouble with law enforcement.”
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However, as stated, Ouda does not have a clean past, except for at least one conviction from ten months ago, for which he went on the “radar” of the security forces and was therefore also arrested again during the riots in Hawara. Moreover, he faces a six-month suspended sentence for a similar offense of disorderly conduct, a suspended sentence that was supposed to send him to prison for at least double the number of months.
Even without knowing about the “disappearance” of the criminal history and the suspended sentence, Judge Lt. Col. Eliyahu Nemani was not at all satisfied with the plea agreement and wrote that it was too lenient and even hesitated whether to cancel it. The judge in sentencing. “At the end of the day, I decided that in light of the arguments of the prosecutor and the defense attorney, among other things, the fact that stones were thrown from a distance of 150 meters, the clean record of the accused and the evidentiary difficulties in this case, to honor the plea agreement.”
IDF: “A mistake was made”
The judge sentenced Odeh to three months of actual imprisonment that will end on 2/9/22, three months of probation for five years and a fine of 1,000 NIS.
Apparently, if the judge had known that before him was a man who was convicted ten months ago and facing a suspended sentence of six months in prison, the punishment of the terrorist who incited Hvara would have looked completely different.
An IDF spokesperson told the Jewish Voice in response that “a mistake was made” and that “lessons were learned and guidelines were refined.”
“On July 20, 2022, the defendant was convicted, according to his confession as part of a plea agreement, of the crime of throwing objects at a person or property, for throwing stones from a distance of 150 meters at the security forces during the month of May 2022. In the plea agreement, certain difficulties in the investigation material were taken into account. The court The military respected the plea deal, and imposed on the accused 3 months of actual imprisonment, conditional imprisonment and a monetary fine of 1000 NIS or one month of imprisonment in exchange.
As part of formulating the settlement and presenting it by the parties, a mistake was made in examining the available information regarding the defendant’s past. Following the incident, the appropriate lessons were drawn and the instructions to the relevant authorities were refined,” the IDF said.
The police told the Jewish Voice that the criminal record of each suspect is transferred to the military prosecution as part of the investigation file in his case, as is the case in this case.