A man suspected of making threats against the life of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara will remain in detention for an extra day, police announced Thursday, after a judge rejected law enforcement’s request to keep him locked up for another week.

The suspect, a 36-year-old resident of Jerusalem whose name is barred from publication, allegedly sent a letter on Wednesday to former chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef requesting permission to kill the attorney general, a largely unpopular figure among Israel’s right-wing and ultra-Orthodox populations.

He is suspected of asking Yosef to issue a din rodef against Baharav-Miara — a religious decree applied to grave offenders thought to be an imminent and lethal danger to others. In Jewish law, one is permitted to stop a rodef by any means, even if this requires killing them.

The label became infamous in Israeli political history after Yigal Amir, the assassin of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, cited it as a religious justification for the murder in November 1995. The term has no standing in Israeli law.

“The erev rav desecrate the name of the heavens with their actions against the Torah world, I am ready to kill the attorney general if I receive approval for such from the three elders........

© The Times of Israel