Four Palestinian men arrested for 2012 home invasion, murder

Algabay was stabbed in the chest when he tried to stop burglars; case cracked after one man arrested on a security charge.

By BEN HARTMAN
Itzhak Algabay 370 (photo credit: Courtesy moshav Avihayil)
Itzhak Algabay 370
(photo credit: Courtesy moshav Avihayil)
Four Palestinian men have been arrested in connection with the stabbing death of an Israeli man last October in the Sharon’s Moshav Avihayil, police cleared for publication on Wednesday.
The victim, Itzhak Algabay, 61, was eating dinner with his family on the night of October 21, 2012, when he went to grab a loaf of bread from inside a small rental unit behind his house, Central District Police said. When Algabay opened the door of the unit, he reportedly surprised three of the defendants, who had broken into the unit moments earlier to steal valuables and search for car keys so they could steal a car and drive it back into the West Bank.
Algabay tried to stop the group from fleeing the apartment, but was stabbed in the chest and bled out in his backyard, police said. The three burglars then allegedly fled the scene and called their get-away driver, who took them to the village of Baka al-Gharbiya.
According to police, they ate at a shwarma restaurant there and changed clothes before slipping back into the West Bank.
The suspects – Akram Farjallah, 39, Hadi Musa, 21, Amar Abu Dakar and Marwan Amar – are all from Tulkarm in the West Bank.
The only piece of forensic evidence at the scene of the crime was a single bloody footprint, and the special investigative unit that police set up was unable to make any headway in the case until June, when the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) arrested Amar on a security charge, and under questioning he admitted to having taken part in Algabay’s murder.
Amar linked both Farjallah and Musa to the crime, and last month, during an operation against burglars in the Triangle city of Taiba, police raided a home searching for stolen goods and found the two suspects hiding in the house. The fourth suspect, Abu Dakar, was already in prison on a different property charge when he was brought in for questioning on the case in June.
Central District Cmdr. Bruno Stein made the case a top priority when he took the position earlier this year, saying, “This is our high moral obligation, to bring these people to justice and put them behind bars.”