On Thursday morning, the Be’er Sheva District Court accepted the state’s appeal and canceled the decision of the parole board to shorten Hani Darri’s sentence. Darri was convicted of driving the terrorist who murdered border policewoman Hadas Malka on June 16, 2017.
Malka, 23, was on patrol outside the Old City walls in Jerusalem when she was attacked near Damascus Gate. She was stabbed in the upper torso and died in Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus.
The district court determined that Darri must remain in prison.
At the end of the court session, Darri’s family members pointed a victory sign with their fingers at David Malka, Hadas’ father, and hollered at him in Arabic, as he was speaking to local media.
At the hearing, the Malka family handed the judges a letter demanding that the terrorist remain behind bars, a position the court endorsed. The judges decided that the decision of the parole committee had been flawed, and that had it not been for the prisoner’s actions, the attack might have been prevented.
The court added that as an Israeli bus owner, the prisoner had born an even higher responsibility regarding security matters.
Attorney Haim Bleicher of the Honenu legal aid society, which extended legal assistance to the Malka family as terror victims, issued a statement saying, “Once again, it has been shown that sounding the voices of crime victims and of Israeli citizens who suffer from terrorism is of the utmost importance.”
“We view this ruling as a statement that the security of the citizens of Israel and the suffering of the victims of terror has precedence over the consideration of the terrorists and their aiders and abettors.”