Charges against Mohammed Bin Said Zofran from Qalqilya, 21, the main defendant in attack that injured 8, include attempted murder, robbery.Indictments were filed on Sunday in the Tel Aviv District Court against two men in connection with a terror attack in south Tel Aviv in August.
Eight people were maimed in the attack, in which 21-year-old Mohammed Bin Said Zofran carjacked a taxi at knifepoint and rammed it into border coppers Or Hakim and Albert Sabah and a civilian bystander, Itay Weinberg, before stabbing several others.
Zofran shouted "Allahu Akbar" ['God is great'] as he swerved into border police outside the crowded Haoman 17 nightclub on Salameh Street. He went on to brutally stab a nightclub security guard before being subdued by nightclub manager Yitzhak Assaraf and two more guards, Oleg Chritov and Grigory Sokolov. The three men were maimed in the struggle.
Zofran, originally from Qalqilya, is charged with attempted murder, injury with serious intent, robbery, illegal residency and conspiracy to commit a crime.
A second defendant, 21-year-old south Tel Aviv resident Mohammed Bin Saddam Hussein Biari, is charged with conspiracy to commit a crime, failure to prevent a crime and destroying evidence.
In addition to giving details of the south Tel Aviv terror attack, the indictment also reveals how Zofran and Biari had plotted to commit several other attacks against Jewish civilians and Israeli security forces.
According to the indictment, Zofran first decided to carry out a terror attack against Israeli security forces in 2009, after Operation Cast Lead.
In 2011, the Qalqilya native was living in Israel illegally, making a living by doing odd jobs, and sleeping in an abandoned apartment next to the Siksik mosque in Jaffa.
While praying at the mosque, Zofran met Biari, an Arab Israeli from Jaffa. The two began to plan a terror attack.
By July 2011, Zofran had already begun physical training for the terror attack. He practiced how to use a knife and a stick in his apartment.
On 12th August, during Ramadan, Zofran and Biari hatched a plot to stab Israeli security forces and civilian Jewish Israelis near the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. They bought two knives and traveled by bus to the capital.Â
Zofran and Biari stayed at the al-Aqsa mosque for two weeks. After speaking to a holy man at the mosque, however, Zofran told his friend that he had decided to act alone and would return to Jaffa to become a "martyr". Before he left, however, Zofran used Biari's cellphone to record a short film of himself for his parents.
On August 28th, Zofran went to the new Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv, planning to stab a soldier, steal his gun and shoot border police. When he failed to find a suitable victim, he noticed a tractor on a building site on Yedidia Frenkel Street in the Florentin neighborhood. Zofran decided to steal the tractor and use it to run over soldiers.
That night, Zofran returned to the construction site but could not find the tractor. Instead, he decided to hijack a taxi and use it to attack border police standing at the nearby junction between Abarbanel and Salameh streets.
Biari was tossed in the clink shortly afterwards, after he had deleted Zofran's movie from his cellphone.
The Tel Aviv District Attorney's Office requested that the two suspects be remanded in jug for the duration of the proceedings against them.