JERUSALEM (JTA) — A Yemen court ruled that a Muslim convicted of killing a Yemeni Jew is mentally incompetent and ordered him to pay a fine.
Retired Yemen air force pilot Abdul Aziz Yahya Hamoud al-Abdi, 39, must pay a fine of about $250,000, the court ruled Monday, for the December murder of Moshe Yaish Nahari, a Hebrew teacher and father of nine.
Abdi had shouted "I am not mad" in the courtroom after his attorneys presented an insanity defense — the same defense that saved him from prison five years ago after he killed his wife.
Abdi had told police that he had sent a message to Jews in the neighborhood that they should either convert to Islam or be killed.
Following the murder, the Yemeni government in January paid to relocate the Jews living in Amran to the capital of Sana’a in order to better protect the community. Some Jews were refusing to move, according to a Yemeni news report.
A few hundred Jews still live in Yemen.
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