Israel: Itamar murderers have been found

By Joseph Dana April 16, 2011 | Edit

According to Israeli media, two Palestinians from the village of Awarta admitted killing five members of the Fogel family a month ago

This text was updated.

According to unconfirmed reports from a rightist Israeli site, the Israeli army has two Palestinian suspects in custody,  Amjed Awad and Hakim Awad, who have confessed to the brutal murder of the Fogel family in the settlement of Itamar last month. The website, claims that the suspects have confessed to murder during interrogation and re-enacted the crime for investigators. These reports are not confirmed, but the Arabic language news site, Ma’an is now carrying the report as well. No detail has been given to how long the two have been in custody or if they had been taken into custody during the last month’s raids in Awarta.

Haaretz reported this morning that the army would release ‘breakthrough’ information about the murder this afternoon. The Israeli army has been quick in recent days to take advantage of the remaining members of the Fogel family for photo opps with the new Israeli army chief of staff, Benny Gantz.

UPDATE: Israeli media has broken the story in Hebrew and it looks like the right wing website got the story correct. This raises an interesting question; why did an extremist right wing settler website know about this story before anyone else in the country?

UPDATE II: This is from Haaretz:

Israeli security forces have arrested two teenage residents of the West Bank Arab village of Awarta for allegedly carrying out last month’s murder of five family members in the settlement of Itamar, the lifting of a gag order revealed on Sunday.

Palestinian students Amjad Awad, 19, and Hakim Awad 18, both admitted to committing the murder.

(…)

An investigation revealed that the two suspects decided that they would carry out the murder on Friday afternoon, hours before the murder was carried out. According to the investigation, the two left Awarta at nine p.m. carrying an umbrella, several knives and wire cutting shears.

According to the Israeli media, four other Palestinians are under arrest for aiding the murderers.

Joseph Dana was a contributing writer on +972 Magazine from August 2010 to December 2011. This is an archive of his work.

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