Tel Aviv – An Israeli man was on Wednesday sentenced to 100 days of community service and ordered to pay around 500 dollars in damages for beating an Eritrean asylum seeker he mistook for an Arab-Israeli attacker.
The incident, described as a lynching by Israeli prosecutors and media, took place in 2015 when an Arab-Israeli open fired in a bus station in southern Israel.
Habtom Zarhum, an Eritrean national, was mistaken for the attacker and severely beaten by a group of four Israelis after he was already shot and lay incapacitated on the ground.
Zahrum died of the wounds he sustained as a result of the gunshot and the beating.
The conviction only deals with one of the four defendants, David Moyal, who was seen on security camera footage hurling a bench at the asylum seeker.
Moyal was convicted of abusing a helpless person.
According to the media, Moyal previously expressed remorse for his actions saying: “There is no day that I don’t think about this and experience it.
“I express deep remorse and sorrow to the family of the deceased,’’ he said.
About 40,000 African asylum seekers, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, live in Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for them to be deported.