Five Jewish teenagers have been arrested after a Palestinian mother was stoned to death in her car in the West Bank.
Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, said in a statement that the suspects, who cannot be named because of their age, were being investigated for “grave terrorism offences, including murder”.
The Palestinian mother, Aisha Rabi, was struck in the head by a large stone as she was driving in a car with her husband and two daughters near Rehelim in the occupied West Bank, on the night of Friday 12 October 2018.
Her husband, Yaqoub Rabi, who was driving, said at the time that he believed the perpetrators were illegal Jewish settlers because he heard them speaking Hebrew.
Aisha Rabi was the mother of nine children.
The five suspects are students of Pri Haaretz, a yeshiva high school for Orthodox Jewish boys in Rehelim settlement, according to Israeli authorities.
The Shin Bet said that the morning after the attack, activists linked to Pri Haaretz visited Rehelim to brief the perpetrators on how to deal with interrogation.
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Israeli officials said that the car journey to Rehelim would have been suspicious because driving on the Sabbath is generally forbidden for practicing Jews, and Yitzhar where the activists set off from is an orthodox religious settlement.
The lawyers who are representing three of the detained suspects are from the right-wing legal aid organisation ‘Honenu’ and ‘Itamar Ben Gvir’.
