A Yemeni confessed on Monday to killing a Jew, saying in court that he had warned that the minority should convert to Islam or leave the country, but his lawyers said he was mentally disturbed.
"I killed the Jew," Abdul Aziz Yahya al-Abdi, 39, screamed from the dock, referring to Masha Yaeish al-Nahari, whom he shot dead over a week ago in the town of Raydah, in the northern province of Amran.
"I have told them in a letter that they should either convert to Islam or leave Yemen, or I would kill them," he said, speaking of the minority of a few hundred Jews who continue to live in the Arabian peninsula country.
Only the immediate relatives of the victim were in court which was filled with members of Abdi's tribe, along with five lawyers who volunteered to defend him.
The hearing was the second, following the opening of the trial on Saturday.
"This man has wronged us," said the victim's father, addressing the judges, pointing at Abdi who appeared in a blue prison uniform.
Abdi said his act was "in accordance with a masters' dissertation I wrote on their electronic war and jihad (holy war) in the name of God."| Well THAT should settle it. |
Defence lawyers retorted that Abdi was "mentally disturbed" and had quit his previous posting as an air force pilot due to his mental illness. They added that he had killed his wife two years ago. "He does not understand what he has done," the defence said, requesting a referral for psychiatric tests.
"Such statements help the Jews against me... I want an American lawyer," Abdi screamed in response, calling upon his tribesmen to sack his legal team.
The court agreed to the defence's request to refer Abdi to psychiatrists despite objections by the prosecution. It adjourned the hearing to December 31.
Some 250 of Yemen's remaining Jewish minority of around 400 live in Amran.
In 1948, Yemen's Jewish community numbered some 60,000 but with the creation of the Jewish state that year, more than 48,000 emigrated to Israel in the following three years. The community continued to dwindle in the following decades and by the early 1990s it numbered only around 1,000 people. The lifting of a longstanding travel ban in 1993 sparked a fresh exodus. |