46 Facts About Yigal Amir

Yigal Amir is an Israeli right-wing extremist who assassinated incumbent Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin on November 4,1995, at the conclusion of a rally in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Yigal Amir was later sentenced to an additional eight years for conspiracy to murder.

The Shin Bet security service has assessed that Yigal Amir remains a threat to national security.

Yigal Amir was born in Herzliya to an Israeli Orthodox Yemenite Jewish family, one of eight children.

Yigal Amir's father Shlomo was a sofer who held a post supervising the kosher slaughtering of chickens and taught Shabbat lessons at a local synagogue.

Yigal Amir's mother Geula was a kindergarten teacher and ran a nursery school in the family home's backyard.

Yigal Amir attended an Independent Education System school in Herzliya, and a high school yeshiva in Tel Aviv.

Yigal Amir did his military service in the Israel Defense Forces as a Hesder student, combining army service in a religious platoon of the Golani Brigade with religious study at Yeshivat Kerem B'Yavneh.

In 1993, Yigal Amir began studying at Bar-Ilan University as part of its kollel program, mixing religious and secular studies.

Yigal Amir studied law and computer science, as well as Jewish law at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies.

Yigal Amir was strongly opposed to the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Yigal Amir participated in protest rallies against the accords on campus, was active in organizing weekend bus outings to support Israeli settlers, and helped found an illegal settlement outpost.

Yigal Amir, who attended the wedding, went into a deep depression.

On November 4,1995, after a demonstration in Tel Aviv's Kings of Israel Square in support of the Oslo Accords, Yigal Amir waited for Rabin in a parking lot adjacent to the square, close to Rabin's official limousine.

At his trial, Yigal Amir said he did not care if the outcome was death or paralysis as long as Rabin was "out of the way".

Yigal Amir's trial lasted from January 23 to March 27,1996.

Yigal Amir was initially defended by attorneys Yonatan Ray Goldberg and Mordechai Ofri, and later by Gabi Shachar and Shmuel Flishman.

Yigal Amir was prosecuted by Pnina Guy, head of the Tel Aviv District Prosecutor's Office.

The judges ordered a mental examination by three district psychiatrists and a clinical psychiatrist, who all agreed that Yigal Amir understood the meaning of his actions and was fit to stand trial.

Yigal Amir admitted to shooting Rabin and attempted to justify his actions on religious grounds, claiming that shooting Rabin was an act of din rodef, which would allow killing to prevent the deaths of innocent Jews.

Yigal Amir claimed he had only intended to paralyze Rabin and not kill him.

Yigal Amir was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Rabin plus six additional years in prison for injuring Rubin.

Yigal Amir was later sentenced to an additional five years, and after an appeal on behalf of the state, eight years, for conspiring to commit the assassination with his brother Hagai Yigal Amir and Dror Adani.

Yigal Amir began appealing on these grounds in December 2020 to the High Court of Justice against the law.

Yigal Amir was held in solitary confinement in Beersheba's Eshel Prison, and moved in 2003 to the Ayalon Prison in Ramla, where a solitary confinement wing was built especially for him.

Yigal Amir was granted the privileges of having no surveillance cameras in his cell, the right to receive visitors in the visiting room, rather than in his cell, and the right to speak with other prisoners.

Yigal Amir was interviewed by the Israeli press in 2008, but the planned broadcast was controversial and subsequently cancelled.

In July 2010, after 15 years of solitary confinement, Yigal Amir appealed to the Petah Tikva District Court to be permitted to participate in group prayers in accordance with Jewish law.

Yigal Amir claimed that the terms of his imprisonment were worse than any other prisoner in the history of the State of Israel, on the grounds that no other prisoner had been in solitary for this amount of time.

Yigal Amir said that failure to allow him to pray in synagogue would be a violation of his right to freedom of worship.

In 2019, Yigal Amir's telephone was confiscated by prison authorities for two months after he used it for political purposes in violation of prison regulations.

Yigal Amir had called rapper and right-wing political activist Yoav Eliasi and urged him to fight for his release, a request which Eliasi rejected.

In protest, Yigal Amir launched a hunger strike and was penalized with seven days in solitary confinement in a cell with downgraded amenities.

From time to time, radical Israeli right-wing organisations carry out campaigns that call for Yigal Amir to be released.

Hagai Yigal Amir was re-arrested and sentenced to house arrest in 2015 for a Facebook post wishing death on President Reuven Rivlin.

Yigal Amir is married to Larisa Trembovler, who was born in Russia.

Yigal Amir has published a novel in Russian, and is an Orthodox Jew.

Yigal Amir met Amir in Latvia, where he was teaching Judaism.

Yigal Amir expressed ideological support for Amir, and they began to correspond and speak on the phone.

Trembovler announced that she was engaged to Yigal Amir and wanted to marry him, while he was in jail.

Yigal Amir's lawyers said this claim violated their client's basic rights and would not hold up in court.

The service was to study how this process would be conducted without Yigal Amir leaving the prison.

Four days later, Yigal Amir was allowed a 10-hour-long conjugal visit.

In 2020, Yigal Amir requested a furlough from prison to attend his son's bar mitzvah, which the Israel Prison Service denied.

Yigal Amir appealed the decision to the Beersheba District Court, which upheld the refusal.

The 2019 film Incitement consists of a portrayal of the factors that led Yigal Amir to commit the assassination.