Wardens shocked as Rabin assassin talks to TV

Officials at Rimonim Prison were surprised last night when footage from telephone interviews with Yigal Amir was aired on Israeli television. Amir, who is serving a life sentence for the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, gave the interviews to channels 2 and 10 without obtaining prior permission from the prison authorities.

Amir told Channel 10 that he got the idea to kill Rabin when he was at a wedding that the prime minister attended, and saw that Rabin had only one bodyguard.

"If I were to shake his hand, I could have easily shot him, if I had wanted to," Amir told Channel 10. "I was inside with a gun. I saw that it was so easy, and told myself that in several years I would regret not having killed him."

Prisons Service officials admitted that they no longer regularly monitor Amir's phone calls and those of his brother, Haggai, who is serving a 16-year sentence for conspiring in the assassination.

The officials said Amir was permitted to make calls to five different phone numbers, all belonging to relatives. They said they will investigate the incident and that Amir "would be punished very severely, including taking away the few privileges he has in jail" - including phone privileges.

Prison Services spokesman Yaron Zamir castigated the media for broadcasting the interviews: "On a personal level I am angry and object to the fact that these interviews were published," he said.

When Amir was asked who influenced his decision to commit the murder, he said "all those that understand the military," naming former prime minister Ariel Sharon, the late former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Rafael (Raful) Eitan, and the slain Moledet MK Rehavam Ze'evi. "All the military experts said that the Oslo Accord was a disaster," Amir also said, referring to the 1993 agreement signed between Israel and the Palestinians by Rabin and Yasser Arafat.