Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade Stabber Gets Life in Prison for Murder
Image by Getty Images
JERUSALEM — Yishai Schlissel, who stabbed six marchers at the Jerusalem gay pride parade, including a 16-year-old girl fatally, was sentenced to life in prison.
On Sunday, the Jerusalem District Court also ordered Schlissel to pay compensation to the family of Shira Banki, the teen who was killed, and to those injured in the July 2015 attack. Schlissel, 40, was convicted in August.
The haredi Orthodox man had been released from prison several weeks before the parade after serving 10 years for a similar attack at the Jerusalem gay pride parade in 2005. In the days leading up to the 2015 parade, Schlissel expressed his opposition to the march in interviews and in ads in haredi synagogues in Jerusalem and Kiryat Sefer.
Police initially turned away Schlissel at an entrance point to the parade, but he found a way in later in the route.
The three judges in their sentencing said: “A person who sees himself as a killer or giver of life cannot walk around the streets of Jerusalem or anywhere else. In the few days of vacation between imprisonment and detention, he ended the life of a girl with a passion for life. He didn’t see her as a human being, and didn’t care at all who will meet [his] knife.”
Banki had been marching in the parade in support of her gay and lesbian friends.
Schlissel had eschewed legal counsel, saying the court does not recognize Jewish law, and he did not cooperate with the investigation. He was found fit to stand trial after two psychological assessments and was represented by a public defender.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
