The Jerusalem District Court convicted four residents of Jerusalem’s Beit Safafa neighborhood on Wednesday in a case involving an alleged Iranian-directed plan to kill an Israeli nuclear scientist and his family, the State Attorney’s Office said.
The four pleaded guilty under a plea agreement to offenses concerning their own roles in the case; none was convicted of planning the killing. Proceedings against three other defendants, including the man prosecutors say received the assassination assignment, are continuing.
Mamdouh Khader and Omri Abu Hamida were convicted of failing to prevent a terrorist act. Mahmoud Khader and Muhammad Taha were convicted of helping another defendant maintain contact with a foreign agent.
According to the amended indictment, a person acting on Iran’s behalf contacted defendant Rami Alyan in September 2024 and offered payment for assignments. Prosecutors allege that Alyan was later told to form a cell to kill the scientist and his family.
Khader and Abu Hamida joined a drive to the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. During the journey, another defendant told the passengers that the trip was part of an assignment from the Iranian contact, the indictment said.
Security personnel refused the group entry, and two other defendants filmed the entrance. After they returned to Jerusalem, Abu Hamida asked why the Iranians wanted the footage and was told that someone at the location was a person they wanted to kill. Khader and Abu Hamida took no steps to prevent the plan, according to the indictment.
Mahmoud Khader admitted helping to spray and photograph writing in Jerusalem. He also drove another defendant to collect two stun grenades and helped obtain a fake police license plate intended for footage that would appear to show an attack on a patrol car.
Taha admitted arranging for a stun grenade to be thrown at an empty home in Katanna (Jerusalem) and filming it to make it appear that a Jewish home had been attacked. He sent the footage to the defendant in contact with the alleged Iranian operative. Taha also held the phone used for that contact to make it harder to locate, the indictment says.
Arguments on their sentences will be heard on a date yet to be set, while the cases against Alyan, Abd al-Rahman Alyan and Muhammad Khatib continue.
Taha also held the phone used for that contact to make it harder to locate, the indictment says.
Arguments on their sentences will be heard on a date yet to be set, while the cases against Alyan, Abd al-Rahman Alyan and Muhammad Khatib continue.