The murderers of 15-year-old Danny Katz will return to the parole board, the Nazareth District Court determined Thursday. The court denied the parole appeal filed by the three Israeli Arabs convicted of the 1984 of killing the Israeli teen, but ruled that they would be eligible to re-file their plea for early parole with the parole board.
"We came to the conclusion that there were some errors by the parole committee, so we are overturning their previous decision and sending the issue back to them for reconsideration, under a new make-up (of the board)," said District Judge Menachem Ben-David.
In July of this year, the Israel Prison Service Parole Board refused to reduce the murderers' sentence by one third, as requested by the prisoners and granted by President Shimon Peres .
The parole board explained its decision by saying that the plaintiffs had not been sufficiently rehabilitated, as evident by the fact that they denied having committed the murder and other offences they were charged with.
Attorney Avigdor Feldman, for the three, said their release would not harm the public interest: "How can we say that these people are dangerous or categorize them as dangerous people who are ineligible for release?
"What is driving the board's decision is their professed innocence and the fact that they had not expressed remorse over the years. That's a consideration of the Spanish Inquisition," he added.
Katz was murdered in 1983, after setting out from his Haifa residence. His body was found four days later in a cave near the Arab village of Sachnin. Five Israeli Arabs were found guilty of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1985.
Their imprisonment was controversial, since their lawyers maintained that the confessions of the five were obtained illegally. A subsequent retrial reconvicted them and sentenced them to life imprisonment.
Two of the five were convicted of the murder of Daphna Carmon in 1987 and were not eligible for release on bond as they were serving a life sentence for that crime.