Israeli parliament scraps right to pardon prime minister's killers
( 2001-12-20 14:14 ) (7 )

The Israeli parliament passed a law Wednesday which would ensure the killer of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated six years ago, could never be pardoned by the Jewish state's president.

The law, barring the president from granting amnesty to the murderer of a prime minister, without referring to the Rabin case, was adopted by 63 votes to 5 with eight abstentions, the judicial committee of the 120-member Knesset said.

The bill was submitted by Abshalon Vilan of the leftist Meretz party, after President Moshe Katsav pardoned a woman implicated in Rabin's death.

Rabin was assassinated on November 4, 1995 at a peace rally in Tel Aviv by Yigal Amir, a young religious extremist who was opposed to Rabin's signing the 1993 Oslo accords, which established Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Amir was sentenced to life in prison in March 1996.

Margalit Har-Shefi, a friend of Amir, was sentenced in March to nine months in prison for having known of his plans and failed to alert the authorities.

Katsav effectively pardoned her in July by reducing her sentence by a third, and she was released on August 10.

Har-Shefi, who had earlier been sacked from a teaching job in a Jewish settlement by former prime minister Ehud Barak, who viewed Rabin as his mentor, had rallied support from settlers, who pressed for her pardon.