Family of slain soldier: Please don’t grant murderer fatherhood
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFAryeh Deri(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
The family of slain IDF soldier Moshe Tamam, who was murdered in August 1984, appealed to Interior Minister Arye Deri on Wednesday requesting that he not grant convicted terrorist Walid Daka fatherhood status in an odd case that pits the statement of the Prison Authority Service with that of the Daka family.Daka, who was found guilty of murder, wed Arab-Israeli woman Sana Salameh. However, he was not granted visitation rights despite an appeal to the Supreme Court.Daka’s family argued that other inmates, such as the convicted murderer of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Yigal Amir, are allowed to see their wives and father children. Yet the court ruled against it.However, Sana gave birth to a baby girl on Monday and argues that the father is her legal husband and that she was able to conceive using semen smuggled out of prison. In the Arab press, the birth was hailed as a defiance of Israeli law and treated as a triumph of reproductive rights of Palestinians.Yet the Prison Authority claims that such a feat is very unlikely to have happened and cautioned against taking statements by terrorists families at face value.The Tamam family argues that it is unlikely that the Prison Authority is misleading the public and therefore Sana could not have had a child with Daka’s semen. In their letter, they request Deri use his authority to ensure Daka will not be listed as the father on the baby’s birth certificate.The family also asked in the letter to have Daka’s Israeli citizenship revoked while he is still in prison to ensure he will not be able to enjoy residency in the state they say he worked to destroy.Deri revoked the citizenship of an Israeli citizen who joined ISIS, Abdullah Hajla, in April. However, Hajla held citizenship of other countries and was not in Israeli prison at the time.
