The Tel Aviv District Court sentenced Taibe resident, Dubian Nazirat, 30, to nine years in jail after he was charged with conspiring to assist the enemy during wartime. Nazirat was a member of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade cell that planned to carry out a terror attack on an Israel Railways train as well as at the Azrieli towers in Tel Aviv in 2004. The men intended to plant an explosive device on railroad tracks near Netanya before detonate it with a cellular phone. The attack was thwarted a day before its planned execution.
Two more Taibe residents, Mujhad Dukan, 22, and Amin Ziwati, 23, had been charged earlier with conspiring to assist the enemy during wartime. Dukan is also charged with contacting a foreign agent.
One of the cell's members received 15 years in jail while another was sentenced to seven years. The group's leader, Ahmed Kaisy, was sentenced to 4.5 years by a military court.
The prosecution argued that Netzrat's sentence should be harsher in light of his Israeli citizenship. According to the indictment, Dukan, whose family received Israeli citizenship in 2000 and moved from the Balata refugee camp near Nablus to Taibe, maintained contact with Al-Aksa Brigades fugitives from his hometown.
Several months before the arrests, during a visit to Balata, Dukan was approached by a known fugitive and asked to help smuggle a bomb into Israel. Dukan was then contacted by Kaisy and asked to place a bomb on a train car.
Dukan allegedly told Kaisy that he was afraid he would not be able to leave the train before the explosion and therefore suggested, and Kaisy agreed, to place the bomb instead on the train tracks.
Following the meeting with Kaisy, Dukan met with the two other defendants and recruited them to participate in the attack. Dukan was informed on October 5 that the bombs were ready to be picked up in Balata, but he was arrested before he could obtain the bombs and the attack was thwarted.