The Prison Service made an unusual decision: Change the handcuffing procedure for Yigal Amir, the murderer of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
According to a report by Liran Tamari on the Ynet website, as part of the new decision, Amir will now also have his legs handcuffed during his stay in prison, alongside the security and supervision measures imposed on him.
Amir has been serving a life sentence since the assassination of Rabin in 1995.
Over the years, he was defined as a security prisoner and held under special conditions of confinement.
For years, his solitary confinement was periodically extended, on the grounds that he posed a security risk due to his ideological beliefs. He was subsequently transferred between various prison facilities, and in 2012, he was transferred to the company of other prisoners in a closed wing following judicial decisions and petitions he filed.
During his years in prison, Amir petitioned several times against the conditions of his imprisonment. Among other things, he demanded that cameras be removed from his cell, that he be allowed to make phone calls under similar conditions to other prisoners, and that he be given greater opportunities to communicate with outside parties.
Some of the petitions were partially accepted, but various restrictions remained in place for security reasons.
In 2001, the Parole Law was amended to stipulate that the Parole Committee would not recommend the sentence of someone convicted of murdering a prime minister for political-ideological reasons. This effectively eliminated the possibility of shortening his sentence through the normal sentencing process.
