Last update - 00:00 08/03/2007
Court okays deal for Parinyan brothers to serve 5-year terms
By Nir Hasson, Haaretz Correspondent
The Tel Aviv District Court on Thursday accepted the plea bargain reached between the prosecution and brothers Sharon and Oded Parinyan and sentenced the brothers to serve five-year prison terms, of which the time they spent in remand will be subtracted.
The court also imposed a NIS 100,000 fine on the brothers.
The court however denied the brothers' request for a furlough from prison before they begin serving their sentences.
Under the plea bargain, The Parinyan brothers were convicted based on their confession to the lesser charge of conspiracy to commit a crime, as opposed to the strict charges placed against them initially - murdering known underworld figure Pinchas Buhbut through police officer Tzachi Ben Or and one of their associates, Shimon Almakayis. The murder charge was removed from the indictment as part of the plea bargain.
In the Zeiler Committee's report, the committee addressed to plea agreement, reached days before the report was released.
"With this plea agreement, the curtain has come down on this absurd proceeding," the report said. "Lack of alertness, the involvement of those suspected of acting based on improper motives in the investigation, and inexplicable failures acted together to a curtain call in which there are murder victims, murderers, and law enforcement bodies ? but no murder convictions."
At the end of the month, the court will be presented with an additional plea bargain reached between the prosecution and Almakayis, who was charged under suspicion that he accompanied Ben Or when he murdered Buhbut.
Almakayis had also been charged with murder, but according to the plea bargain, he will be convicted of the lesser charge of aiding a murderer, and both sides will request a 10-year prison sentence.
Buhbut was murdered in 1999 at the Tel Hashomer Medical Center, while he was recovering from an earlier assassination attempt outside his Ashkelon home. Police suspect Ben Or murdered Buhbut on orders from the Parinyan brothers. The brothers were also suspected of sending agents to murder Ben Or in Mexico.
The two brothers were captured by police at the end of 2005 and charged with murder. The prosecution said at the time it had enough evidence for a conviction, including taped conversations between Almakayis and Ben Or. Nonetheless, growing concerns within the prosecution that it will not be able to supply proof of murder in court led the prosecution to negotiate a plea bargain with the brothers' attorneys.
Last week, The Tel Aviv District Court rejected a plea bargain for Gadi Hazan and Eran Haya, who were convicted of assaulting Jubana Darley, Ben Or's girlfriend. The two had originally been charged with murdering Ben Or in Mexico as well, although that charge was dropped in the context of the plea agreement.
Under the plea agreement, Haya would have received a sentence of eight years in prison, and Hazan would have received a sentence of four year. Instead, the court sentenced Haya to a 13-year active prison term and two years probation, and Hazan to a six-year active term with two year probation.