Israeli man gets 3 life sentences for killing 3 in Palestinian family

Sept. 14 (UPI) -- An Israeli court on Monday sentenced Amiram Ben-Uliel, an Israeli who killed three members of a Palestinian family five years ago, to one life sentence for each of the deaths.

The district court in the city of Lod handed down the sentences. Lod is about 25 miles northwest of Jerusalem.

Ben-Uliel was convicted in May for the deaths of Sa'ad and Riham Dawabshe and their 18-month-old son Ali, who died in a firebomb attack in Duma in July 2015. Their 5-year-old son Ahmed survived.

Defense attorneys said they will appeal the sentence to the Israeli Supreme Court. They argue Ben-Uliel was tortured into confessing by the Shin Bet security agency.

The court said it found those claims difficult to believe.

"The defendant described the scene of the crime in extreme detail in his confessions which were later clarified to be meticulously accurate," the court said at Monday's sentencing. "The defendant carried out a reconstruction with great accuracy and which was close to identical to his confessions."

Ben-Uliel was also convicted on two counts of attempted murder and two counts of arson, but acquitted of being a member of a terrorist organization. He received a 20-year sentence for the attempted murder charges.

The 2015 deaths were widely condemned in the Middle East, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Palestinian Authority the Israeli government was committed to punishing the perpetrator.

Prosecutors at trial accused Ben-Uliel of being a member of the far-right group Revolt, which seeks to create unrest and ruin Israeli democracy and replace it with a Jewish kingdom.

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