Life-sentence inmate Imad Rajeh Mustafa Sarhan, 48, an Arab Israeli resident of Haifa\u2019s Wadi Nisnas neighborhood, died on Sunday morning at Gilboa Prison in the Harod Valley. Sarhan was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering a Jewish prostitute in Haifa and wounding a Border Police officer with an axe in Jerusalem. By the time of his death, Sarhan had served 24 years in prison, some of them in solitary confinement. According to Palestinian sources, he had suffered from cardiovascular diseases in recent years and used a wheelchair in prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sarhan was a member of a seven-man cell consisting of Arab citizens of Israel from the Galilee and northern Israel. The cell was uncovered in late 2001 following a joint effort by the Shin Bet and the Israel Police interrogation unit in the Galilee District. Their investigation revealed that they intended to obtain weapons and use them to carry out a series of attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among the plans uncovered during the investigation were the abduction of a soldier and theft of his weapon, the kidnapping and murder of an armed religious Jew and the theft of his weapon, throwing stones at a police vehicle from a hill near Umm al-Fahm, and carrying out attacks at an escort establishment in Haifa. Some of the cell members had visited such establishments before becoming religious and embracing Islam. They planned to rob the establishments, assault the women working there and, if the robbery failed, murder those present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, Sarhan confessed to and was convicted of two other attacks that he carried out alone. In the first incident, in 1996, he murdered a Jewish prostitute in Haifa for nationalist motives. The woman received clients near a mosque in the city, and Sarhan viewed her activity as a desecration of a holy site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the second incident, in late 2000, immediately after the outbreak of the October riots in Jerusalem, which marked the beginning of the Second Intifada and followed Ariel Sharon\u2019s visit to the Temple Mount while he was a Knesset member and leader of the opposition, Sarhan, then 21, traveled from Haifa to Jerusalem to participate in the riots and disturbances. A Border Police officer responsible for maintaining order became suspicious of him and asked to search him. During the search, Sarhan pulled out an axe and struck the officer twice. The officer was wounded but survived. Sarhan managed to flee the scene, and only during his later interrogation did investigators discover that he had carried out the attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For his crimes, Sarhan was sentenced to life imprisonment plus an additional 10 years. On Sunday morning, as noted, he died in prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Life-sentence inmate Imad Rajeh Mustafa Sarhan, 48, an Arab Israeli resident of Haifa\u2019s Wadi Nisnas neighborhood, died on Sunday morning at Gilboa Prison in the Harod Valley. Sarhan was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering a Jewish prostitute in Haifa and wounding a Border Police officer with an axe in Jerusalem. By the time of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":182257,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"9320","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[62,184,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-184","category-68"],"acf":{"subtitle":"Imad Sarhan, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering a prostitute and attacking a Border Police officer in Jerusalem, died in prison at the age of 48"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182259,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182256\/revisions\/182259"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}