Six suspects have been arrested in last week’s grisly murder of 16-year-old Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir, whose body was found charred in a forest outside Jerusalem an hour after he was reported missing from the East Jerusalem town of Beit Hanina, the Times of Israel reports. The suspects reportedly belong to a Jewish extremist group, and the murder has been characterized as a nationalistic revenge act for the murders of three Israeli teens, Naftali Fraenkel, 16, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19, earlier this month.
According to the Times of Israel, security footage from a building owned by Abu Khdeir’s father captured images of two of the suspects.
In the video, two young men are seen conversing with a third person, presumably Abu Khdeir, who is not visible in the frame. According to police, Abu Khdeir was forced into a vehicle moments later. After the kidnapping, several bystanders who witnessed the incident tried to chase the car before returning to Shuafat to notify Abu Khdeir’s parents. At 4:05 a.m, Abu Khdeir’s father called police. The teenager’s body was located within an hour, after his cellphone was tracked by police.
We’ll update this post as we learn more about the developing situation.
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Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.
