Israeli suspected of Palestinian killings 'freed'

 AFP

JERUSALEM — An Israeli court on Thursday ordered the release to house arrest of a former settler suspected of killing four Palestinians and wounding seven others more than ten years ago, Israeli media reported. Haim Pearlman, 29, a former West Bank settler now living in central Israel, was arrested in mid-July in connection with a string of stabbings during the late 1990s.

But on Thursday a court in Petah Tikvah near Tel Aviv ordered his release to house arrest, denying repeated requests by prosecutors and the police to extend his remand in custody, Israeli public and army radio said.

He will have to observe the house arrest order for just two weeks before being totally freed, although he is barred from leaving Israel for six months, public radio said.

The Israeli courts administration refused to confirm any information about the decision to release him, telling AFP it was "a confidential file."

Pearlman was initially arrested on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and illegal possession of weapons, police said.

But a judge at Petah Tikvah Magistrates' Court said earlier this week that police had insufficient evidence to file an indictment against him, the Haaretz daily reported.

"These are serious allegations of murder, and the suspect has been held for a month," Judge Nahum Sternlicht was quoted as saying. "Evidence that led to his arrest has been assembled but it was not sufficient to file an indictment."

Media reports said Pearlman was a member of the banned anti-Arab Kach movement, a racist group which advocates the forcible expulsion of all Arabs from the area known as "Greater Israel," which includes Israel, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

They said he had served jail time in the past for assaulting Palestinians.

Settlers frequently clash with Palestinians in the West Bank but killings are rare. The most infamous incident was the 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinians by a radical American-born settler in a mosque in the West Bank town of Hebron.