Asher Weisgan, sentenced to 4 life terms for shooting Palestinian civilians, found hanging in cell.
By JPOST.COM STAFF
Asher Weisgan, the Jewish terrorist sentenced to four life terms plus an additional 12 years for murdering four Palestinian laborers, committed suicide in his prison cell on Friday afternoon.
During a routine check of the prison, Weisgan was found hanging in his cell.
After a medical team tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate him, a Magen David Adom doctor pronounced him dead. A preliminary investigation revealed that Weisgan had not previously shown any signs of suicidal tendencies to his jailers.
Weisgan, 38, of Shvut Rachel neat Shiloh, was convicted on September 27 in the Jerusalem District Court of shooting and killing four Palestinian civilians in the area in an attempt to scuttle Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip last year.
He had also subsequently called for the assassination of former prime minister Ariel Sharon.
The court also ordered Weisgan to pay NIS 228,000 to each of the families of the four victims, and another NIS 100,000 to the man he wounded, in an unusual court-ordered monetary penalty for a murder case.
A driver who transported Palestinian laborers, Weisgan grabbed a gun from a security guard at the end of the work day last August, and then opened fire at the workers in his car at close range, killing three instantly and mortally wounding a fourth, who died later at a Jerusalem hospital.
The four-page charge sheet called the shooting rampage near Shiloh 'cold-blooded and premeditated' murder.
The indictment said the attacker sprayed five or six bullets at each of his victims, whom he knew well, at one point even refilling his spent cartridge as he sought out his last victim.
Weisgan then went after a fifth victim back at work, the indictment read, repeatedly shooting him at close range and then verifying he was dead before finally turning himself in to a settlement security guard.