RUTHFULLY YOURS

On Sunday, inmate Samuel Sheinbein, 34, was killed at the Rimonim prison near Tel Aviv, after shooting and seriously wounding three guards. The Israel Prison Service and police are now investigating the incident.

How Sheinbein obtained a weapon and managed to fire it without detection are among the questions being asked. Accusations are starting to fly, with Sheinbein’s lawyer claiming that she had alerted the IPS to her client’s “great stress,” but to no avail.

Meanwhile, the larger controversy surrounding Sheinbein’s incarceration is barely being mentioned, even by members of the media covering the shootings. Perhaps it is considered old news, the details of which are only worth repeating for background information.

But if there ever was a case that needed rehashing, it is this one.

In 1997, when Sheinbein was 17, he and Aaron Needle — a friend from the Charles E. Smith Jewish day school in Maryland — committed the premeditated murder of another teenager, Alfredo Tello, Jr., due to rivalry over a girl.

The murder was meticulously planned and carried out by Sheinbein and Needle, who lured their victim to a designated area, incapacitated him with a stun gun, choked him with a rope and stabbed him in the neck and chest with a knife. They then took his dead body to Sheinbein’s family garage, where they dismembered and burned it. Afterwards, they stuffed it into a garbage bag, placed it in the trunk of Needle’s car and deposited it in a vacant home for sale that belonged to a different classmate.

Once the deed was done, Sheinbein and Needle absconded to New York City. Needle’s parents persuaded him to return home, where he was arrested. While in detention, he hanged himself in his cell.

Sheinbein’s parents, on the other hand, helped him evade police. His father, Sol — a lawyer who was born in pre-state Palestine — bought him a plane ticket to Israel and drove him to Kennedy Airport.

Soon after his arrival in Israel, where he received citizenship (by virtue of his being a Jew and of having an Israeli parent), his parents and brother, Robert, joined him in the Holy Land.

The first thing Robert did to celebrate was to get drunk with his brother and hire a prostitute for them to share. It was a high-quality reunion.

Nor did the partying end there; it culminated in Sheinbein’s being hospitalized for a drug overdose and arrested. The Israel Police then informed the U.S. authorities of his whereabouts.

The State Department requested that Sheinbein be extradited to stand trial in the U.S. The Jerusalem Magistrates’ Court ruled in favor of extradition, but Sheinbein appealed to the Supreme Court, which — due to a 1978 law banning the extradition of Israeli citizens — overturned the ruling.

Sheinbein was tried and convicted in the Tel Aviv District Court in 1999, receiving a “life sentence” of 24 years. He was 19 at the time. This meant that he would still be a young man, only 43, at the time of his release.

So horrifying was this fact on both sides of the ocean that it caused a mini-rift with the U.S. government and outrage among Israelis. In response, the Knesset passed two new extradition laws: one stating that an Israeli citizen can only avoid extradition if he also has a “residential connection” to the country; the other saying that an Israeli citizen can be extradited to face trial abroad on condition that he is allowed to serve his time in Israel.

Had this legislation been in place earlier, Sheinbein would not have been able to manipulate this aspect of the Israeli system to his advantage. Anyway, he went on to benefit from other legal loopholes.

As hard as it is to fathom, this psychopathic killer actually received a furlough earlier this month. Though previous furloughs for which he was eligible (!) had been suspended by the IPS, Sheinbein went to court and had them reinstated. It was thus that on February 6, he was out on the street, free as a bird.

And what did he do on his day off? He went to purchase a gun and bullets from a guy he contacted over the Internet. One assumes, then, that he had had access to a computer behind bars.

Being the upstanding dual American-Israeli citizen that he was, Sheinbein tried to steal the weapon and run away. But the seller succeeded in catching up with him and calling the police. Sunday’s shootout occurred two and half weeks later.

This travesty goes beyond IPS negligence, no matter how egregious. The greater horror lies in the lenience of the legal system as a whole. Indeed, it is shocking enough when terrorists are released from prison as part of a political/diplomatic process. But when violent criminals are treated with kid gloves for no apparent reason, profound change in the entire concept of justice is required.

Sheinbein finally got what he deserved. Now what about the rest of us?

Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.'”