Israel gives life sentence to Christian who murdered daughter who converted to Islam

An Israeli court yesterday handed down a life sentence to a Christian Arab man for murdering his teenage daughter in 2017 after she converted to Islam and intended to marry a Muslim man.

The Lod District Court issued the sentence to Sami Kara, 59, who stabbed 17-year-old Henriette, and ordered him to pay $83,000 (258,000 shekels) in compensation to the mother of his daughter.

According to the indictment, Henriette had confided with a relative that she intended to convert to Islam and marry a Muslim man she had met. Her partner was under arrest at the time of her death and she was staying in the city of Ramle with her partner’s mother having fled home for fear for her life. However, when her father found out, he is said to have turned up at the apartment and fatally stabbed her three times.

“By his acts, [Kara] trampled on the social value of the sanctity of life and cut short the life of a 17-year-old girl, his only daughter,” the indictment said.

“He knocked on the door of his late daughter’s home, and she opened it to him, assuming her father would never use the opportunity to take her young life with a sharp object… It was a vile, cruel and criminal act.”

Local reports at the time also revealed that Kara was a relative of a then-newly appointed Supreme Court judge, George Kara, who learned of Henriette’s death during his swearing-in ceremony at former President Reuven Rivlin’s residence.

Haaretz reported that the father had denied he had murdered his daughter when questioned by police and that no forensic evidence had been found which implicated him. However the court found that “the assorted evidence comes together to produce an overall picture that brings us to conclude that the defendant did commit the murder”.

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