Israel indicts militant settler behind series of killings

Nov 12, 2009, 8:12 GMT

Jerusalem - Israeli prosecutors Thursday indicted a militant Jewish settler who has confessed to a host of attacks against Palestinians, the gay community in Israel and left-wing Israelis opposed to Jewish settlement of the occupied West Bank.

The indictment against Yaakov Teitel, 37, born in Florida but a resident of the northern West Bank settlement of Shevut Rahel since 1997, charged him with two murders, three attempted murders and other acts of violence.

He arrested on October 7 and police said he later confessed to most of the allegations against him.

Teitel told reporters at the District Court in Jerusalem that God was 'proud' of his deeds and that he had 'no remorse.'

According to the Israeli police, the father of four, among others, confessed to the murder of an east Jerusalem taxi driver and a Palestinian shepherd in 1997. He also said he was the one who placed a bomb outside the home of an Israeli professor with left-wing, anti-occupation views, injuring the academic in September 2008.

He also sent a package with explosives to a family in the Jewish settlement of Ariel, whose Messianic faith he opposed. The family's son, 15 at the time, opened the package and was severely injured.

Yaakov 'Jack' Teitel was arrested as he was hanging up flyers in an ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood of Jerusalem in support of an August shooting attack in a gay club in Tel Aviv, in which two Israeli youths were killed.

Teitel during his investigation claimed credit for that attack as well, but police said they did not believe he was in fact the gunman.