2 Israeli teens convicted of killing Palestinian youth

Two Israeli teens were convicted Monday of the 2014 murder of 16-year-old Palestinian Muhammad Abu Khdair, a crime Israeli authorities described as a revenge killing and which contributed to the Gaza war that year.

But the official verdict for a third, adult suspect, 31-year-old Yosef Haim Ben-David, was delayed at the last minute after his defence lawyers submitted a psychiatric evaluation claiming he could bear no criminal responsibility due to serious mental problems, reports dpa.

The judges at Jerusalem's District Court slammed the defence, calling its behaviour "inappropriate."

The accused did commit the crimes attributed to him, including murder and abduction, according to a copy of the ruling.

But "despite this, we refrain, at this point, from convicting accused number 1 and the matter will be discussed later on," the judges wrote.

Further debate on Ben David's conviction was expected in mid-January, and the delay angered Abu Khdair's family.

"He waits until two days ago to bring a document saying he is crazy. How can that be? It is all lying to the court, lying to us," said Abu Khdair's father, Hussein.

"Where was he a year ago, two months ago?" he told reporters at the court.

Defence Attorney Asher Ohayan claimed he had had "real reasons" for his late submission. He had to turn to a psychiatric abroad for the evaluation, which had to be translated from English into Hebrew.

Prosecutor Uri Korb said he had opposed the submission of the psychiatric evaluation and expected and hoped the court would reject it.

"The court ruled today unequivocally that the three accused committed what was attributed to them in the indictment - meaning the barbaric, despicable crime of abducting an innocent human being, solely because of his nationality, and burning him alive," he told reporters.

Palestinian officials, including of the Islamist Hamas movement in Gaza, condemned the failure to immediately convict Ben-David as being tantamount to an acquittal.

The ruling sent to dpa noted the adult Israeli suspect had been on medication for many years for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), among other complaints.

The two other suspects, who were minors at the time of the crime, turned 18 in August and this month. One of them also suffers from OCD, said the court documents.

They were convicted of murder, abduction with the intention to commit murder, and also of the attempted, but failed, abduction of another Palestinian child the previous night.

Muhammad Abu Khdair, 16, was forced into a car outside his East Jerusalem home on July 2, 2014. The three suspects beat him unconscious before driving to a nearby forest and burning him to death while he was still breathing. His charred body was found hours later.

The indictment filed last year revealed gruesome details and showed the adult and his two younger relatives had gone on a revenge quest, driving through the night throughout East Jerusalem to find a victim.

An attempt to abduct another Palestinian child failed the previous night, when his mother struggled with the attackers.

They said it was revenge for the slaying of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank the previous month.

The three Israeli teens were shot in a car by two Palestinian abductors. Their bodies were found three weeks later in a Palestinian field north of Hebron.

Israel launched massive searches and arrests in the West Bank to find the three, and those raids sparked rocket attacks which escalated into the 2014 Gaza war.

The rocket fire also escalated with the murder of Abu Khdair.