Security forces say they solved 2 terror stabbings

2 men charged with attempted murder for incidents earlier this year; one originally intended to murder a soldier.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
Knife (illustrative) 370 (photo credit: Knife)
Knife (illustrative) 370
(photo credit: Knife)
The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and police announced the solving of two stabbing terror attacks that occurred earlier this year.
In the first attack, on January 23, an Israeli civilian was stabbed and moderately injured at the Tapuah Junction in the northern West Bank.
“On the same day, a suspect was arrested.
He confessed to carrying out the attack, and reenacted it,” security forces said.
They named the suspect as 23-year-old Mustafa Barghouti, of Beit Rima in the Binyamin region, and a student at the Nablus Al-Najah University. He was arrested by Border Police following a short chase.
“The suspect said he acted on his own accord, without accomplices, and that his initial aim was to murder a soldier,” security forces said.
During questioning, Barghouti “expressed no regret, and said he’d have no problem with the injured civilian dying from his injuries.”
Barghouti was charged on March 7 with attempted murder and carrying and manufacturing a weapon.
The second case involved a stabbing of an Israeli civilian on February 4 in east Jerusalem. The attack victim was lightly injured, as the knife was lodged in a prayer book in his shirt pocket.
On the scene, police arrested 28-year-old Samar Ahmed Mahmoud Matar, a resident of the village of Idna, in the South Mount Hebron region, and handed him over to the Shin Bet for questioning.
The suspect told the Shin Bet he had planned to murder a haredi man or a settler for three months, and entered Jerusalem illegally for that purpose several days before the attack.
He also confessed to weighing the possibility of building an explosives device and planting it on a bus carrying haredi passengers in Beit Shemesh.
“Matar, a Hamas member, was placed in administrative detention between 2009 and 2011 due to his activities in Hamas and plans to carry out attacks,” security forces said.
Matar was charged with two counts of attempted murder, membership in an illegal organization, contact with the enemy and manufacturing weapons.