Jerusalem Court Indicts Bus Station Stabber

Jerusalem, 28 December, 2017 (TPS) -- The Jerusalem District Prosecutor’s Office filed an indictment Thursday against Yassin Abu al-Qar’a, a 24-year-old resident of Nablus, who stabbed a security guard in the chest at Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station on December 10.

According to the indictment al-Qar’a committed the attack following US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which brought on his decision to murder as many Jews as possible in Jerusalem and to die as a “shaheed” to protect Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

According to the Jerusalem Police District, the evening before the terror attack,  Abu al-Qar’a posted a message containing a quote about martyrdom on his Facebook profile. According to the indictments, al-Qar’a took the quote from a Palestinian Authority school textbook.

The next morning, after calling some friends, al-Qar’a went to the village of Bata’a, where he purchased a kitchen knife with the intention of carrying out a stabbing attack.

With the knife hidden in his jacket al-Qar’a passed through a checkpoint using a work permit and arrived at the central bus station in Hadera, where he asked around how to get to Jerusalem. He then took a  taxi to Jerusalem and asked the driver to bring him to the central bus station under the pretext that his employer was supposed to come and collect him from there.

During the drive to Jerusalem, al-Qar’a wrote his “will” on his mobile phone that he intended to publish on Facebook shortly before the attack. “My brother, oh my brother, I ask you to take care of you father and mother. Oh, sister, if you worry about me, for the sake of the homeland I sacrificed my blood, everything for you, Palestine.” he wrote.

When he got out of the taxi, al-Qar’a went to the entrance gate of the central bus station, where he was asked by a security guard to present an ID. While the security guard checked the defendant’s ID, he was joined by two other security guards, who also examined the documents and asked him to pass through the metal detector. Al-Qar’a repeatedly pulled out metal objects he held on his body, except for the knife, and when he was asked to take off his coat and go through the detector again, he decided to carry out the attack, and stabbed security guard Asher Elmaleh in the chest, critically wounding him.

The Prosecutor asked to detain Abu al-Qar’a until the end of legal proceedings.