JERUSALEM, June 9 (JTA) — Five Israelis testified this week at the trial of the Jordanian soldier charged with the murder of seven Israeli schoolgirls. The students were gunned down in March at the Naharayim enclave on the Israeli-Jordanian border. Among those appearing Monday in a military court near the Jordanian capital of Amman were three teachers who accompanied the school trip and a student who was seriously wounded when the soldier, Ahmed Dakamsheh, opened fire on the group. “It wasn’t easy. It was quite scary,” Maya Shmuel, who was wounded in the attack, told reporters after testifying. Her mother, Claudine, added, “I was watching the soldier glare at my daughter. “It was very unsettling for her to have to face this murderer again. She was shaking all over.” The Israelis were asked to testify in order to challenge the defense claim that the girls had provoked the soldier while he was praying. The Israeli liaison officer in the West Bank who received evidence in the case said it was clear that it was not a time of Muslim worship when the soldier opened fire, and that the rest of the evidence disproved his contention that he had been provoked. The five Israelis later were invited to have lunch with King Hussein at his palace. Along with the seven Israeli schoolchildren he killed, Dakamsheh wounded six others while the students were on a field trip to the border site known as “The Island of Peace.” The island was transferred to Jordan under the 1994 peace treaty with Israel, but the area, a popular tourist destination, is farmed by Israelis.
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