The Tel Aviv District Attorney’s indicted a Palestinian teenager on four counts of attempted murder and a terrorist act for a Tel Aviv stabbing attack that left four people lightly injured.
Imad Agbar, 18, from Nablus is charged with entering the Leonardo Beach Hotel on April 23 and attacking three people after stabbing a 70-year-old nearby.
According to the indictment, Agbar confessed to the attack and sought to “kill Jews because they are Jews.”The indictment stated that he sharpened his belt buckle in order to pass a weapon through the security checkpoint to enter Israel from the West Bank.After leaving the tour group in Hayarakon Park in northern Tel Aviv, the defendant allegedly located a 70-year-old man and stabbed him with the belt buckle and hit him repeatedly.Later Agbar entered the Leonardo Beach Hotel where he took wire cutters and entered an antiques shop in the hotel lobby and stabbed the clerk near the neck.The clerk’s husband began to chase Agbar, into the lobby where the defendant attacked another employee and the husband blocked the hotel’s revolving door. The teenager is then said to have ran into the husband smashing the glass door and running outside where he was subdued by police officers.
Agbar entered the city with the NGO Natural Peace Tours. He had received a one-day pass to enter Israel, provided by the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories.
According to the indictment Agbar previously planned to carry out a stabbing attack at the Dead Sea in December 2016, but retracted the plans after a taxi driver told him that the beach was not crowed during that time of year.