Justices from the Nazareth District Court have rejected a petition by Palestinian Arab terrorist Wahib Abu Rub on Sunday, after he challenged the special ruling of the Israeli Prison Services parole board whereby he was returned to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence.
Abu Rub was convicted for the heinous murder of 19 year-old IDF soldier Liat Gabai in 1994; Gabai was critically wounded after Rob struck her in the head with an axe several times as the soldier headed to her base in Afula. The murder has become known as the “Afula axe attack.”
Despite the severity of the crime, Abu Rub was nonetheless released from prison in 2011, as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal – having served just 17 years of his 40-year sentence.
Abu Rub was returned to prison in 2014, however, after the abduction and murders of Israeli yeshiva students Eyal Yifrah, Gilad Sha’ar, and Naftali Frankel, during a police crackdown on released terrorists which revealed that many had returned to terror activities.
Judge Yonatan Avraham upheld the parole board’s decision, noting that the petitioner indeed had violated the terms of his release, and that Abu Rub had been linked with senior Hamas officials.
“Therefore, the petitioner’s claim that all of his activities, as declared in his affidavit, did not exceed the permissible and acceptable conditions of his parole should be rejected,” he added.
As a rule, he noted, “these violations are substantial violations, which are beyond the conditions set forth by the President and are intended to harm national security. In these circumstances, there is no need to wait until these activities will bear fruit and for the damage to materialize [to return the terrorist to prison – ed.].”
Abu Rub will now serve his full sentence.