Thai King pardons Israeli who murdered ex-wife

Eight years after he was sentenced to life in prison for murdering his ex-wife Carol and dumping her dismembered body in a Bangkok river, Israeli Eli Cohen is set to be released from prison in six months, following a pardon by the King of Thailand, the Israeli Foreign Ministry confirmed this week. 

Carol’s family reacted to the news with outrage this week, and has accused the Interior Ministry of involvement in the pardon, a charge Minister Eli Yishai has denied outright. 

Carol’s mother, Rivka Amsalem, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that she heard the news that her daughter’s murderer had been pardoned the night earlier when she received a call from a reporter from Ma'ariv, and not from any Israeli official.

“It’s a very terrible feeling to know he’ll be released. How could it be that someone murders his ex-wife in such a brutal and terrible way, and then cuts her up and throws her into a river, can be pardoned?” Amsalem said.

Amsalem said that on Tuesday she was contacted personally by Eli Yishai’s spokesman, who denied reports that Yishai pulled strings to secure Cohen’s release.

“There is still something fishy (masriach) here; there are many other Israelis sitting in Thai prisons for drugs and they aren’t given pardons but this person is? How does it make any sense?” Amsalem added.

Now that her daughter’s killer is set to be a free man and could very well return to Israel in May, Amsalem said, “I don’t want him in Israel, that’s my war now, to make sure he never comes back here. I want the country to help me fix this problem they caused.”

“He [Cohen] has nothing to look for here [in Israel], he should spend the rest of his life in the galut (exile).”

In February 2004, Cohen bought a one-way ticket for his ex-wife to fly her out to Bangkok, saying he wanted to spend some time with her in the city. Within the first 24 hours after her arrival Cohen murdered her in his hotel room and crammed her mutilated body into a suitcase, which he threw in a river in the city. Cohen then called the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok to report his wife missing, but was almost instantly tapped by police as the chief suspect.

Following reports that Eli Yishai was involved in securing the pardon, the minister’s office sent out a statement on Tuesday denying the reports, but adding that Yishai has worked on behalf of young Israelis serving drug offenses in Thailand and India, in order to find a way for them to serve their sentences back in Israel where the conditions of detention are more humane.

“The minister has never knowingly worked for the sake of releasing a murderer and if it turns out he was involved in such instances it was a mistake and the instance must be checked. The minister believes that the place of a murderer, any murderer, is in prison for the rest of their lives,” the statement continued.

A press inquiry to the Embassy of Thailand in Israel went unanswered by Tuesday afternoon.