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Israelis arrest bus 'lynch mob' |
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Wednesday, 14 June 2006Israeli police have arrested seven Arabs suspected of lynching a Jewish man who killed four Arabs on a bus in a northern Israeli Arab town last August.
The arrests angered Israeli Arabs who said the men had acted in self-defence to stop more killings in Shfaram.
Arab citizens make up about 20% of the Jewish-majority state of Israel and frequently complain of discrimination.
The extremist pro-settlement supporter apparently opened fire to protest at Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip.
At the time of the attack, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called the killer, Eden Nathan Zaada, a "bloodthirsty terrorist" - language usually reserved for Palestinian militants - and settler groups condemned the killings.
Gag order
Media reports quoting police say the arrests were the culmination of a 10-month investigation by a special police team.
A gag order was imposed on the entire investigation but was lifted following the arrests, Haaretz newspaper reported.
The killer was beaten to death by a crowd that stormed the bus after he had been subdued, apparently trying to reload his weapon having killed three passengers and the driver and injured 20 others.
"Police and the security forces have been looking for an alibi to distort the facts and deny the massacre that took place in the town," said Muhammad Baraka, a member of the Israeli parliament who lives in Shfaram.
He said people had turned on Zaada to "defend themselves against an armed man who may have killed someone else".
The army said at the time that the 19-year-old from the West Bank settlement of Tapuah had deserted in protest at the withdrawal by Israel of settlers from the Gaza Strip and four small West Bank settlements.
"Our main aim is to bring those who committed the cold-blooded murder of Zaada to trial and justice," police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld told journalists.
BBC News
June 13, 2006
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Wednesday, 14 June 2006
Israel
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