Photo Credit: Basel Awidat / Flash 90
Israeli police blocked road in Ar'ara as security personnel searched for a killer.

Mohammed Melhem, the father of Tel Aviv shooter Nashet Melhem, has been freed from custody along with his son Ali.

The two men were released to house arrest on $1,270 bond in an agreement between the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet/Shabak) and attorney Nechami Feinblatt, a public defender who represents the family.

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“I think the Shin Bet understands that the family wanted to help capture him and not help him,” the attorney said.

Both were held in custody along with six other relatives and friends last week while the killer was at large. They were arrested on charges of being accessories to murder, illegal association and conspiracy to commit a crime and premeditated manslaughter.

Melhem murdered three people in Tel Aviv on Jan. 1 using a weapon he stole from his father, a volunteer police officer. It was the elder Melhem who identified his son to police as the killer after seeing a video of the murders on television.

When he still was not captured within three days, the elder Melhem was taken into custody along with other relatives and friends. It later turned out that numerous family members did indeed know Nashet was back in the village; but they were reluctant to turn in one of their own. The subsequent pressure by Shin Bet operatives, leveraged via arrests and questioning, plus the gathering of DNA and other hard evidence, proved essential in ending the saga.

Nashet Melhem will be buried in his home village of Ar’ara in Wadi Ara in a small private ceremony on Sunday afternoon. The family is doing whatever it can to put this behind them, a relative said.


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Hana Levi Julian is a Middle East news analyst with a degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from Southern Connecticut State University. A past columnist with The Jewish Press and senior editor at Arutz 7, Ms. Julian has written for Babble.com, Chabad.org and other media outlets, in addition to her years working in broadcast journalism.