A Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court judge acquitted a man accused of attacking a Catholic nun based on his insanity defense, but ordered him committed to psychiatric hospitalisation for up to six years.
The violent assault in April on a nun walking in her habit in Jerusalem’s Old City sent shock waves across Israel and its many Christian communities.
On August 26, a judge ruled that there was evidence that a Jewish man from a settlement in the occupied West Bank committed the actions he was charged with, but he was entitled to an insanity defense after the district psychiatrist found he was psychotic at the time of the attack.
The director of The French Biblical and Archeological School of Jerusalem, where the nun is a researcher, told The Associated Press that he hoped the psychiatric hospitalisation would be carried out in full “so that public safety can be assured, our colleague can recover psychologically, and people can live in and visit Jerusalem without fear, regardless of their belonging to any community.”
