US oleh sentenced for importing arms

Tapuah resident gets 2.5 years; says he planned to donate weapons to IDF.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Published: JUNE 20, 2007 16:39
multipurpose crime 298 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski and AP [file])
multipurpose crime 298
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski and AP [file])
An American who lived in a West Bank settlement was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison on Wednesday after being convicted of trying to import weapons that police suspected he intended to use against Palestinians. Forty-year-old Jeffrey Seth, formerly of North Carolina, was arrested last year after claiming a shipping container that contained a snipers' rifle, a crossbow, a bullet-making machine, gunpowder, cartridges, 1,200 bullets and other munitions, according to a court statement. Seth was convicted earlier this year of illegally importing, possessing and planning to manufacture weapons. Judge Bracha Bar Ziv of Haifa District Court said the prosecution failed to prove he planned to turn the weapons on Arabs, but rejected the defense's argument that he intended to donate the weapons to the IDF. After immigrating to Israel in March 2006, Seth moved to Tapuah in the West Bank. Shortly after he was indicted last year, an interviewer asked him if he ever thought of using the rifle on Palestinians. "Well, I can't say that the thought didn't cross my mind, every time you see a suicide attack," he told Israel Radio. Seth was arrested at the Haifa port after authorities there alerted police to their suspicions that weapons were in the container.