Israeli reserve army officer admits to murdering tourist

JERUSALEM, Aug. 24 (JTA) — Israelis have reacted with shock to the news that an Israeli soldier, not a terrorist, was behind the recent murder of a British tourist. Israeli police arrested Maj. Daniel Okev, a reserve army officer who admitted to the Aug. 13 murder of Jeffrey Hunter, 22, and the wounding of his girlfriend, Charlotte Gibb. Although he admitted to picking up the tourists near Eilat and later shooting them, Okev could not offer a motive. “Maybe I need a doctor,” Okev said during a detention hearing last Friday. “Maybe I have a split personality.” A breakthrough in the investigation came when a policeman at a roadblock set up after the murder recalled seeing Okev in a car similar to the one witnesses said they had seen parked in a deserted area that turned out to be the murder scene. The policeman said that Okev had identified himself as a reserve army officer when he was stopped at the roadblock. With permission from the district attorney, investigators secretly took Okev’s car for examinations that turned up Hunter’s fingerprints. When police came to arrest Okev last Friday at his home in Even Yehuda, near Netanya, he surrendered, handing over his gun and saying, “I know why you’re here.” Okev, 45, is a father of two. He left the army several years ago and had been working for a trucking company. During a re-enactment of the shooting, Okev told police how he had picked up the two tourists near Eilat, and began driving north. He said that after driving for a while, he pulled the car over and they got out to smoke and drink some water. Okev said the conversation was pleasant and that there had been no argument. He said that when they returned to the car, he got in first, pulling his pistol out from under the seat where he kept it. “All I remember after that is that they were then lying on the ground,” Okev said. “I don’t know how many times I fired.” Okev left the scene and drove back to Eilat, where he was stopped at the roadblock and allowed to go on. Hunter and Gibb were found by a passing car. Okev’s attorney, David Yiftah, argued that his client was temporarily insane at the time of the shooting and should not be held responsible. “I don’t think we are dealing with a conventional crime carried out by a hardened criminal,” he said. “We are dealing here with an army officer, a decent citizen, a loyal family man. As we know, Daniel Okev had no motive for committing murder and does not recall shooting the victims,” Yiftah told Israel Radio. Police rejected the argument, and Okev was placed in custody for 15 days. The family of the murder victim has been sharply critical of the treatment they received from both Israeli and British authorities. Norman Hunter, Jeffrey’s father, told the Israeli daily Ha’aretz that the authorities in Israel and Britain had offered no help — logistical, financial or otherwise — in transferring the body back home. He said he learned of the arrest of a suspect by chance, when he went to visit his slain son’s wounded girlfriend in a hospital in Cambridge, England.