Amiram Ben Uliel, who was convicted in May of three counts of murder in a 2015 arson attack in the Arab village of Kfar Duma, was handed three life sentences by an Israeli court on Monday.

The Lod District Court said that Ben Uliel, 26, committed the attack that killed three members of the Dawabsha family out of “extreme and racist ideology.”

According to the conviction, Ben Uliel carried out the attack to retaliate for the murder of Malachi Rosenfeld in a drive-by shooting days earlier.

A teenaged accomplice who signed a plea bargain with prosecutors admitting to conspiring with Ben-Uliel in planning the arson attack and to three counts of vandalism will be sentenced on Wednesday.

Ben Uliel was also sentenced to an additional 20 years of prison for injuring Ahmed Dawabsha, the five-year-old surviving member of the family, and firebombing another home that turned out to be empty. Ben Uliel was also ordered to pay fines of NIS 258,000 ($75,000) each to Ahmed Dawabsha and the owner of the empty house.

Ben Uliel confessed to the attack several times during interrogations by the Shin Bet but some of the confessions were deemed inadmissible in 2018 after judges determined they had been extracted through torture. The teenaged accomplice’s plea bargain deal was also criticized for being based on a confession extracted during torture.

Ben Uliel’s lawyers are planning on appealing the conviction to the Supreme Court.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)