The Arab terrorist who stabbed four Israelis in a terror attack in Ra’anana on October 13, 2015 was sentenced on Thursday in Jerusalem District Court to 21 years in prison on one count of attempted murder and three counts of aggravated assault.
Judge Ruth Lorch also fined 30-year-old Khaled Basti of eastern Jerusalem, ordering him to pay each of his victims thousands of shekels – NIS 80,000 to the one who was the most seriously wounded as he wielded a serrated knife to murder Jews at a bus stop during the height of the 2015 wave of terror.
Basti managed to stab the first victim three times before the knife snapped, with the blade remaining in the wound. He then carried on stabbing three others with the hilt and the remaining part of the blade. He then threw down the knife and ran when a witness yelled “Terrorist, terrorist!” Basti immediately pulled a second knife from his pocket and trying to stab civilians and police officers who quickly chased him down and overpowered him.
“The attempted murder was not carried out by the defendant out of a state of recklessness or a momentary fury,” the judge noted in her ruling. “He planned his actions and intended to murder a Jew out of a national ideological motive.
“One must take into account the defendant’s inability to show any empathy towards the victims of the offenses.”