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Brutal murder of Israeli prison guard was terror attack, prosecutors say

Palestinian terrorist stabbed Yochai Avni 66 times in his home before setting the building on fire; the state finally agreed with the family Tuesday that the crime was nationalistically motivated.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The State Prosecutor decided at the last minute Tuesday to add terrorism charges to its indictment of the alleged Palestinian killer of prison guard Yochai Avni, finally agreeing with his relatives that the crime had been nationalistically motivated.

Ibrahim Mansour, the indictment stated, entered Avni’s home in the Benjamin region village of Givon Hahadasha on the night of July 8, stabbed the Ofer Prison employee 66 times and hit him on the head repeatedly with a chair until it broke.

“The accused did all this due to the fact that the deceased was Jewish, with the intention of causing his death and fleeing the scene,” it said.

He is also suspected of trying to set fire to the house before running away.

When Avni did not report for work the next day, a brief search by his colleagues and the police led to the discovery of his body in the partly burned apartment, with Mansour’s knife still stuck in his neck.

After the Bidu village native was caught two days later, he claimed that it had been a burglary attempt gone bad, and that he’d had no intentions of killing anyone. However, Mansour failed a polygraph test in which he was asked if he’d planned the murder.

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Avni’s family had immediately stated that it had been a terrorist attack, as the 40-year-old dog handler regularly guarded Palestinian security prisoners and, lately, Hamas Nukhba terrorists, in the high-security prison, besides living in an all-Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria.

They put out a statement Tuesday saying that they “felt huge relief about the final indictment,” and thanking the Prosecution Service for taking their opinion seriously.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is in charge of the Israel Prison Service as well as the police and Fire and Rescue Authority, welcomed the news.

“Better late than never,” he posted to X. “I welcome the decision of the prosecutor’s office that determined this morning after 51 days the murder of prison guard Yochai Avni to be an on nationalistic grounds, and not criminal as they were misled to think at first.”

Avni’s sister, Nitzan, had told the press right after the murder that her brother “didn’t have a single enemy” and that he “went to work with a sense of mission, which led him to get up in the morning for his difficult job.”

Just prior to the indictment, she told Channel 12 that “We are sure that justice is with us. It’s a struggle not only for us but for the entire people of Israel.”