Attorney Yoram Sheftel intends to submit a demand to the Parole Board of the Israel Prison Service next week to consider and examine the sentence of Yigal Amir, the assassin of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Sheftel explained in an interview with Arutz Sheva the logic behind the demand and why he calls the Yigal Amir law "barbaric and despicable."
"I am going to contact the special parole board at the beginning of next week, which will discuss the sentencing of life prisoners. I tell them that they must discuss Yigal Amir's sentence like any other prisoner, except Arab terrorists," said Adv. Sheftel, explaining: "It applies to him because it is a personal and mostly retroactive law and therefore also barbaric."
"This is a clear penal code that increases the term of imprisonment by decades, that is, until his death. But there is no prisoner who has served more than thirty years. Since he was transferred [to prison] at the age of 27 he should be released at the age of 60. Since the average man in Israel lives to 80 they added another 20 years to his sentence through retroactive legislation passed six years after the act. This is against the law which explicitly states that there are no penalties unless there are warnings, no retroactive punishment may be imposed for any offense. Therefore, the committee should discuss the reduction of Yigal Amir's sentence. There is no such thing as retroactive criminal legislation," he said.
Why did Sheftel not present this argument from the start? "Because I've only been on this case for the last week. Secondly, in reality, Yigal Amir did not seem to have any chance of being sentenced to less than 25 years. Now he has finished serving 25 years and it's time to act to reduce his sentence."
"There is no country in the world that has determined that the blood of a prime minister is redder than the blood of any other citizen. Here you have a country that is a bastion of democracy like the United States. Between 1865 and 1901, three presidents were assassinated there, Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. Every 12 years a president was assassinated there and still in the United States there is no specific law for the assassination of a president," he added.
"There is no country in the world that has a specific law for the murderer of the head of the executive branch, the head of state, a king or any other title. It is from the abominable creator of the Bolshevik left. They initiated this travesty. This is the most despicable law the Knesset has passed. In no democratic country would anyone dare pass a law that retroactively imposes a penalty of decades for a particular offense.
"Since it is clear to me that the Parole Board will reject my appeal to discuss the reduction of Yigal Amir's life sentence, I will therefore appeal to the Supreme Court to repeal the law. It has repealed close to twenty laws even though it has no authority to repeal, but if it can repeal the law to shut up Arutz Sheva because of future damages to competition, how can it not repeal a law which is scandalous, retroactive and personal, and therefore barbaric?" Sheftel concluded.