Posted on 06/18/2002 3:56:31 PM PDT by vannrox
'Watermelon bomb' transporter gets 18 years
A Palestinian sentenced to 18 years in prison by the Jerusalem District Court yesterday for transporting a bomb stuffed in a watermelon last year in a failed terror attack, was also behind a thwarted plot to bomb a restaurant in Jerusalem's Ein Karem neighborhood, according to court papers released yesterday.
Balal Odeh, 24, of east Jerusalem, a graduate of Bethlehem University, received the watermelon bomb last July 27 from an activist in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Using his Jerusalem identity papers to travel freely into the capital, he transfered it to Samar Mutav, whom he dropped off at the city's central bus station.
Mutav took the watermelon, which was packed with shrapnel and explosives and set to go off by the ring of two cell phones inside, and boarded a No. 39 bus. At a certain point, he got off and dialed the phone number that was to trigger the explosion. However, due to a technical malfunction the bomb failed to explode.
The bomb was later found as the bus was parked at a shopping mall in the Malha neighborhood, and safely neutralized by police sappers.
A month earlier, Odeh had scouted out the Anashim restaurant in the city's Ein Karem neighborhood to help plot a bombing at the site.
The heretofore undisclosed plot, which was thwarted by the Shin Bet, was to leave a bomb in the restaurant's washroom, and then when all the people were fleeing the carnage detonate an even larger car bomb outside the eatery, to inflict maximum casualties.
The plot was averted after the arrests of the cell members shortly after the thwarted watermelon bombing.
Odeh, who served a year in prison at age 16 for setting a car on fire, was apprehended himself on August 8.
In their sentencing yesterday, the three-judge panel of Yaffa Hecht, Moshe Ravid, and Ya'acov Tsaban rejected the defense's argument that Odeh's role in the attacks was "minor," and that they should take into account that the planned bombings ended without injury.
The judges wrote that Odeh played a "central part" in the cell, and acted with "advance planning, composure and meticulous planning," exploiting his status as a Jerusalem resident in an attempt to cause the "massive deaths and injury of Israelis," which was averted by nothing short of a "miracle."
They noted that the bus bombings and car bombings planned were "the utmost wicked and contemptible acts...a country wide plague which in and of themselves are reason for harsh sentencing in order to thwart future bombers." The defense has the right to appeal the sentencing to the Supreme Court within 45 days.
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