Submit your comments on this article | |
Arabia | |
Yemeni Jew killer gets death sentence | |
2009-06-23 | |
[Al Arabiya Latest] An appeals court in Yemen sentenced to death a Muslim man who shot dead a Jewish compatriot on Sunday as 16 Yemeni Jews arrived to Israel in a secret exodus. The ruling overturned a previous sentence in March in which the court deemed Abdul-Aziz al-Abdi, a retired pilot in the Yemeni air force who killed a Jewish Yemeni, "mentally unstable." It ordered him to pay a fine of 50.5 million riyals ($250,000.) However the victim's father appealed the verdict and now Abdi's attorneys said they would file an appeal to the country's supreme court, the highest judicial body. Yehiya bin Yaeesh said his son Mashaa was in the company of four Muslim men when he was shot in the town of Raida in December and had clearly been targeted. There are 200-300 Jews in Yemen. About 50,000 moved to Israel in an airlift begun in 1949.
Sunni Muslims make up the majority of Yemen's 23 million inhabitants, while most of the rest are from the Zaydi branch of Shiite Islam. | |
Posted by:Fred |