Nazareth woman indicted for faking stabbing in suicide bid

Nazareth woman indicted after she's shot by police while faking stabbing attack.

By BEN HARTMAN
Updated: OCTOBER 30, 2015 05:09
Police shoot terrorist armed with knife in Afula
A Nazareth woman arrested during a suspected terror attack in Afula earlier this month was indicted on Thursday on charges of carrying a knife and making threats.
The woman, 29-year-old Asra Zidane, was indicted on the lesser charges after prosecutors determined that her emotional distress drove her to fake an attack in order to cause security personnel to shoot her dead.
According to the indictment, “the background to the incident was the emotional state of the defendant and her prior suicide attempts. She decided to try and commit suicide again, among other reasons because of a romantic relationship that had ended.”
The indictment describes how Zidane came to the Afula Central Bus Station at 1 p.m.
on October 9 and “posed as someone committing a stabbing attack with the goal that security personnel would shoot and kill her.”
After arriving at the station, Zidane stood next to a group of people – including uniformed soldiers – who were waiting to board buses. She then raised the knife “out in the open, in a threatening manner toward the people standing next to her, but did not stab anyone,” the indictment reads.
Zidane then yelled at a group of soldiers “You are terrorists,” which the indictment says was “done with the goal of causing them to shoot her dead.”
A prosecutor referred to Zidane repeatedly as being dangerous to herself and others because of her emotional state, saying that “she has proven that she will do anything in order to carry out her goals, and will not hesitate to use any means to do so.”
They added that the Afula incident was her latest attempt to end her life, a more extreme step than any she’d taken before, and that there is a danger that she will again try to kill herself in a way that will possibly endanger the lives of others.
In a video released shortly after the incident, Zidane can be seen standing at the station surrounded by several police and security personnel, with the knife in her hand and apparently talking on a cellphone.
After refusing several calls to drop the knife, she was shot several times in the lower body and admitted to hospital in satisfactory condition.


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