RAMALLAH, Thursday, January 02, 2020 (WAFA) – Foreign and Expatriates Ministry today condemned an Israeli court ruling granting early release to an Israeli Jewish mass murderer who gunned down seven Palestinians in 1990.

The Ministry slammed the Israeli court’s ruling deciding that Ami Popper, who was convicted for the killing of seven Palestinians and wounding 16 others in Rishon Lezion on May 20, 1990, was not a terrorist and granting him early release as an “evidence that the Israeli judicial system is an integral part of the occupation system and organized state terrorism practiced by Israel.”

“The Israeli ruling is in fact intended to cover up the crimes ]committed against the Palestinians[ and protect the murderers,” and amounts to an encouragement to Jewish terrorist operatives, everywhere, to go further in attacking the Palestinian people.”

The ministry also slammed the Israeli judiciary’s complicity in terms of putting Israeli Jews who commit acts of vandalism and terrorism against Palestinians on trial involving farcical court procedures, in contrast to rendering severe court sentences against Palestinians.

On May 20, 1990, 20 Palestinian workers from the Gaza Strip waited for their employers to pick them up from the Rishon Lezion bus station, also known as Oyoun Qara, when Popper, a discharged soldiers at the time, arrived and checked the workers’ ID cards. After ensuring that they were all Palestinian, he ordered them to line up in three lines and kneel down, then opened fire on them, killing seven and badly injuring 16 others.

Popper was sentenced to seven concurrent life terms plus 20 years on the same day, but his sentence was reduced to 40 years in 1999. He was set to be released in 2030.

While Israel has withheld a portion of Palestinian tax revenues equal to the stipends the Palestinian Authority pays to the families of prisoners in Israeli detention, the Israeli government continues to pay a regular monthly salary to Popper.  

K.F.