ISRAEL: Police Say LGBT Center Shooting Was To Be Hired Hit On Gay Leader

Tel Aviv police yesterday said that the man who murdered two people in a 2009 mass shooting at an LGBT teen center was contracted to kill a gay local leader. The intended victim, police say, is the fourth man arrested two days ago for withholding information about the attack. Via Haaretz:

It is believed that the man who pulled the trigger was a hired gun who, when he did not find his target at the Bar Noar youth club, opened fire indiscriminately, killing Liz Trubeshi and Nir Katz and injuring dozens of others. While only one killer came to the club, police reportedly believe that at least two more people conspired with him and came to his aid afterward. All three are known criminals, with the killer and at least one accomplice being "soldiers" in a large, central Israeli crime organization who have been interrogated since the Bar Noar killings for arson and assault, police said.

The fourth, most recent arrest in the case, is apparently of an activist in the gay community. He has been detained for allegedly knowing the motive for the murders and obstructing the investigation by not sharing that information with police. It is believed this individual is directly connected to the motive, and that he was the target of the assassination, which involved revenge. The gag order prohibits making the motive public at this time. The activist is known to support young people in the gay community and help them with decisions regarding their sexual identity.

Haaretz notes that a pending bill to compensate the victims and their families is in jeopardy as the police now say that the attack was not an anti-gay hate crime.

The Times Of Israel reports that some gay journalists are skeptical about the latest statements by the police. In particular, they question the timing of the most recent revelations in a four year-old crime for coming on the eve of today's gay pride parade in Tel Aviv.

Gal Uchovsky, a gay culture journalist, wrote on the Channel 2 News website that an incident in which an individual walks into a gay youth center and shoots people is still a hate crime, even if his motives were personal. Uchovsky wrote that it was “conspicuous” that police made the arrest in the middle of gay pride week and that they were trying to portray the shooting as a personal vendetta and not a hate crime. “I call this a stain on the gay community,” he wrote.

Another journalist, Danny Zack, complained that the police were being too lax because they believed “it wasn’t a Palestinian terrorist or an Orthodox Jew” who committed the crime, meaning it didn’t have a nationalistic motivation, he wrote on the Channel 2 News website.

Activists familiar with the identity of the fourth man told Ynet news they were shocked that he was a suspect in the case. “He was a father figure to us,” one of the activists said, explaining that the man had arrived at the center shortly after the shooting to try to help, and that he expressed concern that the shooter would be let off the hook by pleading insanity.

Two of the three suspects in the shooting are related and one would have been 16 years old at the time of the attack. All three were previously known to the police for unrelated crimes. Police says that in addition to having withheld the motive for the crime, the intended victim is "suspected of sexual offenses."