Terrorist says he bought a skullcap to make it easier to enter Israel.
By World Israel News Staff
The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court has extended until Thursday the arrest of Arafat Irfaiya, the 29-year-old Hebron resident suspected of murdering teenager Ori Ansbacher in the Ein Yael area outside Jerusalem in February.
The Jerusalem District Attorney’s Office issued a statement saying that it intended to file an indictment against Irfaiya by Thursday.
Irfaiya told investigators that he did not plan much of the attack in advance aside from purchasing a skullcap so he could slip into Israel undetected, Channel 12 news reported Saturday.
“I bought the yarmulke two weeks earlier, so I could enter Israel without being suspected or identified as an illegal resident,” Irfaiya reportedly told investigators, adding that he did not tell anyone else of his plans in advance.
“I left my home to kill a Jew due to the occupation and treatment of Arabs at checkpoints,” he reportedly said.
According to the report, Irfaiya told investigators he met Ansbacher, 19, by chance in a forested area close to Jerusalem where she was sitting on a rock, writing in a notebook.
Irfaiya reportedly said he stabbed Ansbacher three times and dragged her as she tried to resist. He then stabbed her further, before gagging her with her scarf and binding her hands.
The suspect said that after the attack, he took Ansbacher’s cellphone and destroyed the memory card.
At that point, Arafiah took a taxi, which eventually took him to the Ramallah-area. Nothing about his escape route was planned, he said. After he hid the knife, which was later found among bags of cement near the mosque in which he was hiding, he was found by Israeli counter-terror officers.
Last month, the Shin Bet security service announced that the murder was a terror attack, saying Irfaiya re-enacted the murder of Ansbacher in front of interrogators and “implicated himself definitively in the incident.”
The suspect reportedly told interrogators that he entered Israel and looked for a Jewish victim because he wanted to be a martyr.
“I entered Israel with a knife because I wanted to become a martyr and murder a Jew,” he reportedly said. “I met the girl by chance.”
Channel 13 news reported that Irfaiya was arrested in 2017 at the entrance to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem armed with a large kitchen knife, and had indicated that if released, he would “come back here with a knife.”
Additional details regarding the investigation remain under a gag order.