Last update - 00:00 17/12/2006
Police arrest teen suspected of planning suicide bombing
By Eli Ashkenazi, Haaretz Correspondent
Police and the Shin Bet security service recently arrested a 17-year-old Israeli Arab under suspicion that he had planned to carry out a terror bombing in Upper Nazareth.
The arrest was released for publication Sunday, the same day the Northern District Attorney's office indicted the teen at the Nazareth District Court.
The indictment describes the teen as a product of a broken home - his mother lives in the lower Galilee and his father lives in the Palestinian Authority.
According to the indictment, a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades approached the teen while he was visiting his father's village and accused him of cooperating with Israel's security forces. The boy denied the accusation and was then asked to carry out a suicide attack in Israel.
The teen refused and told his parents of the incident. Consequently he was arrested and questioned in Israel. The Nazareth District Court prohibited him from entering the Palestinian Authority for six months, which expired in June.
In September, the boy again visited his father, and again was met by Al-Aqsa activists. One of them repeated the accusation that the boy had cooperated with Israel and offered him an opportunity to "clear" his name by carrying out a suicide bombing. This time the teen agreed and said he would blow up the Plaza Hotel in Upper Nazareth because he had noticed its "high Jewish occupancy and lax security."
The activists agreed that he should obtain explosives and learn how to use them. He was planning to return to the village at the beginning of December to pick up the explosive belt the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades had prepared for him.
The teen was charged with contact with a foreign agent and conspiracy to commit a crime.