Father of slain Palestinian from east Jerusalem: My boy was killed in revenge

Hussein Abu Khdeir remains convinced that his son was murdered in revenge for the deaths of three Jewish teenagers in the West Bank.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Suha, mother of Mohammed Abu Khudair, shows a picture of her son on her mobile phone at their home in Shuafat. (photo credit: REUTERS)
Suha, mother of Mohammed Abu Khudair, shows a picture of her son on her mobile phone at their home in Shuafat.
(photo credit: REUTERS)
The father of a Palestinian teen who was abducted and killed in Jerusalem on Tuesday remains convinced that his son was murdered in revenge for the deaths of three Jewish teenagers whose bodies were found in the Hebron area on Sunday.
"My son went to the mosque for morning prayers," Hussein Abu Khdeir, the father of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, told Army Radio on Thursday. "Two people got out of a car, took him, kidnapped him, forced him into the car, and sped away. We have their picture and their license plate number. We called the police right away, and we told the police that we know where he is because he has a cell phone, and they did nothing."
"I feel as though I lost my boy," he said. "He was an excellent student. He loved a lot of people and they loved him. There are a lot of people in my house right now, maybe a thousand."
Just after noon on Wednesday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Office issued a statement saying Abu Khdeir’s killing was a “reprehensible murder.”
Netanyahu asked Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch to ensure that law-enforcement works as quickly as possible to investigate the boy’s death.
The prime minister called “on all sides not to take the law into their own hands,” and remarked that “Israel is a nation of laws and everyone must act according to the law.”
The Palestinian Authority charged that Jewish extremists had killed Abu Khdeir in an act of revenge for the murder of the three Israeli youths.