Rabin killer's brother under house for Israel president threat on Facebook

An Israeli court released Hagai Amir, the brother of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin, to house arrest on Wednesday after being arrested the day before for comments in a Facebook status against Israeli president Reuven Rivlin.

Hagai Amir was released from prison in 2012 after more than 16 years behind bars for conspiring with his brother Yigal Amir to assassinate Rabin in November 1995.

In his Facebook post, he wrote that it was time for Rivlin "to pass from this world".

At a ceremony Sunday marking the 20th anniversary of the assassination, Rivlin pledged that he would never agree to calls from Yigal Amir's supporters to release him from prison, where he is serving a life sentence.

“As long as I am the president of the State of Israel, [Yigal Amir] will not go free,” Rivlin said. “Let my right hand wither, if I ever sign a pardon for this cursed man. Never."

Yigal Amir shot Rabin, 73, three times in the back in November 1995 in what he later said was an attempt to derail the peace process he was pursuing with the Palestinians.

In response to Rivlin's recent comments, Hagai Amir posted that "the time has come for Rivlin and the Zionist state to pass from this world due to the crimes they have committed against their people, and that day is not far."

The Amirs are among radical Orthodox Jews who do not recognise the secular state of Israel founded in 1948, saying that only God has the authority to create such an entity.

In 2006, while in prison, Hagai Amir was given an additional 12 months for threatening the life of former premier Ariel Sharon after telling a guard: "I can make one phone call and make sure Sharon is killed and blown up."

Sharon ordered Israel's 2005 unilateral pullout from the Gaza Strip, enraging Israeli rightists.

In court Wednesday, was asked if he regrets publishing the post, to which he responded: "Of course not."

A Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court judge sent Amir to house arrest until November 8 over his Facebook post, saying he posed a “public threat.” 

However, his attorney refused the court’s description, and described Amir as a “man of peace”.

“Since he was released from prison he has become a man of peace. He’s not some violent right-winger who could pick up a gun tomorrow and try to get to Rivlin. He didn’t call, God forbid, for someone to hurt President Rivlin. He said something that everyone believes. Nobody is immortal,” said the lawyer, according to Ynet.