Yassin Abu al-Qar’a, a 24-year-old resident of Shechem (Nablus) who stabbed a security guard in the chest at Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station on December 10, 2017, returned to court Wednesday to face charges of attempted murder and entering Israel without a permit.
According to the indictment al-Qar’a committed the attack following U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Al-Qara allegedly decided to murder as many Jews as possible in Jerusalem and to die as a martyr to “protect” Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
According to the indictment, the evening before the terror attack Abu al-Qar’a posted a message containing a quote about martyrdom on his Facebook profile, that he had taken from a Palestinian Authority school textbook.
The next morning, after calling some friends, al-Qar’a went to the village of Bata’a, where he purchased a kitchen knife with the intention of carrying out a stabbing attack.
With the knife hidden in his jacket al-Qar’a passed through a checkpoint using a work permit and arrived at the central bus station in Hadera, where he asked around how to get to Jerusalem. He then took a taxi to Jerusalem and asked the driver to bring him to the central bus station under the pretext that his employer was supposed to come and collect him from there.
During the drive to Jerusalem, al-Qar’a wrote a “will” on his mobile phone that he intended to publish on Facebook shortly before the attack. “My brother, oh my brother, I ask you to take care of your father and mother. Oh, sister, if you worry about me, for the sake of the homeland I sacrificed my blood, everything for you, Palestine,” he wrote.
When he got out of the taxi, al-Qar’a went to the entrance of the central bus station, where he was asked by a security guard to present an ID. While the security guard checked al-Qar’as ID, he was joined by two other security guards, who also examined the documents and asked him to pass through the metal detector. Al-Qar’a repeatedly pulled out metal objects he held on his body, except for the knife, and when he was asked to take off his coat and go through the detector again, he stabbed security guard Asher Elmaleh in the chest, critically wounding him.
Elmaleh was released from hospital earlier this week.
The Prosecution has asked the Court to continue Abu al-Qar’a’s remand until the end of legal proceedings.