Jewish settler jailed for killing Palestinians

JERUSALEM, Sep 27 (Reuters) An Israeli court today sentenced a Jewish settler to life imprisonment for killing four Palestinians in a West Bank shooting spree last year, prosecutors said.

Asher Weisgan had told investigators he carried out the shootings in a bid to provoke violent Palestinian retaliation that would tie down Israeli troops and halt their removal of settlers from the Gaza Strip in a pullout completed a year ago.

On the day the evacuation of Gaza settlers began on August. 17, 2005, Weisgan, a driver, took Palestinian workers to jobs in Shiloh, a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Once there, he snatched a security guard's weapon and opened fire on the passengers, killing three Palestinans and injuring another.

He later shot at other Palestinian labourers in Shiloh's industrial park, killing another man, before being overpowered.

The Jerusalem District Court found him guilty of murder, attempted murder and aggravated assault, sentencing him to four consecutive life terms, to run consecutively, and an additional 12 years in jail, prosecutors said.

The three-judge panel also ordered Weisgan to pay compensation amounting to 1.1 million shekels (6,000) to the Palestinian families of those killed and injured.

''It was a savage murder of innocents, who fell victim to the twisted logic of the accused,'' the court said in its ruling.

Israel completed the withdrawal of its troops and more than 8,500 settlers from Gaza in mid-September 2005, ending more than 38 years of occupation.

In the run-up to the pullout, Jewish ultranationalists turned on then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, saying he was giving up land that some Jews view as a biblical birthright.

Weisgan said after his arrest he had no regrets about the shooting and hoped that Sharon would be killed as well. Sharon, who suffered a stroke in January and remains in a coma, had described Weisgan's attack as an ''act of Jewish terrorism''.

Convictions of Israelis for crimes committed in the West Bank are rare. An Israeli human rights group said earlier this month in a report that up to 90 percent of cases brought by Palestinians against Israeli settlers end in failure, with files lost or closed for lack of evidence.

REUTERS AB RK2002