The Jerusalem Arab who killed one Jew and critically injured another last week has admitted to investigators he was “looking for Jews’ and intentionally rammed his car into them.
Khaled Koutineh, 37, ran over and killed Shalom Cherki and critically injured Shira Klein, whose condition remains the same although it has stabilized.
Koutineh originally claimed he was involved in an accident, a story that Israel’s establishment left-wing media tried to believe, as did the police, although they added that terror had not been eliminated as a motive.
Despite eyewitness accounts that Koutineh aimed his car at a group of Jews at a French Hill bus stop, the idea that he was a terrorist remained on the back burner until last Saturday, when the police finally stated that it was a terrorist attack without a shadow of doubt.
The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and police on Tuesday revealed that Koutineh has confessed that he intentionally killed his victims for the reason that they were Jewish, as he assumed by their dress.
He had tried to convince police that he was “crazy,” noting that he had visited a psychiatrist because of emotional problems.
Koutineh was not a part of any terrorist cell. He told security officials that he thought of carrying out the hit-and-run terrorist attack a short time before he used his car as a murder weapon.