Scene of the crime (archives)
Photo: AP
Frammartino's lifeless body (archives)
Photo: AP
Life sentence for Palestinian who murdered Italian peace activist
Court sentences Ashraf Hanaisha to life in prison after convicting him of murdering Angelo Frammartino in August 2006. Hanaisha confessed to stabbing Frammartino, who was in Jerusalem establishing a summer camp for Palestinian children, saying he had thought the 24-year-old Italian peace activist was a Jew
The Judea Military Court on Thursday sentenced Ashraf Hanaisha to life in prison after convicting him of the murder of Italian peace activist Angelo Frammartino, to life in prison.
Hanaisha, a resident of the Jenin area who was affiliated with Islamic Jihad, confessed to stabbing 24-year-old Frammartino after mistaking him for an Israeli Jew.
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The indictment filed against Hanaisha states that he decided to carry out the attack following the deaths of his cousins. On August 10 2006, he headed towards Jerusalem to realize his plan.
After asking passersby to direct him to a Jewish area where he could find work, Hanaisha spotted Frammartino walking along Sultan Suleiman street with three Italian friends.
Hanaisha trailed the four and when they stopped near a bus station, he took out a knife from his pocket and began stabbing Frammartino in the back. The knife remained imbedded near Frammartino's right shoulder while Hanaisha fled the scene.
Frammartino managed to remove the knife from his shoulder but then collapsed immediately afterwards and paramedics who arrived at the scene were unable to resuscitate him and he died of massive blood loss, just two short days before he was scheduled to return home.
Hanaisha meanwhile had already boarded a bus to al-Ram, from there he took a taxi to Ramallah.
'He was a pacifist'
Frammartino, a law student from the town of Monte Rotondo, came to Israel earlier that month as a volunteer for ARCI, an organization promoting human rights. He worked to establish a summer camp for Palestinian children in the Old City in Jerusalem."He was a golden guy," said a neighbor of Frammartino's parents, "he dealt with politics but he wasn't an extremist. He was just a pacifist."
In a letter sent by Frammartino to a local newspaper two months before his death, the young man wrote: "We must face the fact that a situation of no violence is a luxury in many parts of the world, but we do not seek to avoid legitimate acts of defense."
"I never dreamed of condemning resistance, the blood of the Vietnamese, the blood of the people who were under colonialist occupation or the blood of the young Palestinians from the first intifada," he said.
