An indictment was handed down in the Jerusalem District Court on Thursday morning 28 Adar-II against Abed Abu Sneineh, of Akib, a village on the northern Jerusalem border. While serving a sentence in the Ketziot Prison, he and fellow prisoner Ihab Subah planned the terror attack last summer. Released in September 2015, Subah asked Sneineh to assist him in perpetrating the attack outside Jerusalem’s popular Malcha Mall. They agreed that when Sneineh is released, they would work together. Sneineh was let out of prison in January 2016.

The two met in a Ramallah café a month following Sneineh’s release, and it was then they decided to move ahead with the attack. They agreed on a Thursday afternoon because then there would be many soldiers heading home for the weekend. Subah gathered weapons and ammunition and he was going to dress as an IDF soldier, realizing this would permit him to be armed and approach soldiers at a bus stop. Sneineh conducted video surveillance of the area around the mall and that is when he was taken into custody.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)