An IDF court sent a Hamas terror mastermind to prison for life after he was found responsible for the brutal kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers.

Inside an Israeli prison. (Photo: Moshe Shai/Flash90)

Hussam Hassan Kawasme, the Hamas terrorist responsible for the planning of the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers this past summer, was sentenced to three life terms, or 75 years, in prison by an IDF military court on Tuesday. The court further ordered him to pay NIS 250,000 to each of the three families.

Kawasme, 40, was convicted last week of leading the terror cell based on his confession of planning and financing the attack, including receiving NIS 200,000 from Hamas in the Gaza Strip, purchasing and providing weapons for the other terrorists, purchasing the abduction car, hiding the bodies and destroying evidence.

The IDF prosecutor said during the hearing that Kawasme did not see the boys as humans, “and therefore it was possible to slaughter and just dump [the bodies] into the ground.”

The court was not seeking Kawasme’s death, he declared, but rather “that he spend his life behind a cement wall, because that is justice.”

Murdered Because They Were Jews

The judges stated that this particular act of terror was one of the most severe Israel has known, and that it has “deeply affected the security situation.”

”They [the terrorists] proved that human life means nothing to them. The boys were kidnapped because they were Jews,” the judges added.

Kawasme had already served seven years in an Israeli prison for previous terror activities.

The three Israeli high-school boys – Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frankel, and Eyal Yifrach – were on their way home from school in Gush Etzion on the night of June 12 when they were kidnapped and murdered by Marwan Kawasme and Amar Abu Aysha, who dumped their bodies in a shallow grave.

Not knowing that the boys had been murdered, the IDF launched Operation Brother’s Keeper to find them. They were located after 18 days.

A three-month-long manhunt for the abductors came to an end in September when a special police unit, acting on intelligence gathered by the Shabak (Israel Security Agency), identified the terror cell and killed them.

“This won’t bring back the boys,” Racheli Frankel, Naftali’s mother, told IDF Radio upon hearing the news. “I am glad no one else was hurt. I was worried the terrorists would take more people with them on their way out from this world. I am happy that did not happen. I am not sad [that] I will not meet their smiling faces in court or in situations were they might have been released during a prisoner release deal.”

By: Aryeh Savir
Staff Writer, United with Israel