As Israelis on Sunday marked 25 years since a Palestinian mob lynched two Israelis in a Ramallah police station, one of its perpetrators was set to go free in the first phase of the hostage release and ceasefire deal.

Raed Sheikh was a Palestinian police officer who took part in the October 12, 2000, lynching of IDF reservists Vadim Norzhich and Yossi Avrahami after they accidentally entered the West Bank city and were taken into police custody.

A frenzied crowd quickly formed around the police station that morning as rioters called for their death. The rioters eventually stormed the building and murdered the two Israelis, mutilating their bodies and later parading them around Ramallah’s city center.

During the break-in, Sheikh took an iron rod to Norzhich, beating his head in until he bled profusely, according to the indictment. Sheikh was arrested months after the lynching and convicted by a West Bank military court in 2003, which sentenced him to two life terms.

“I took an iron pipe, about 25 centimeters long, and went to the room where the two reservists were placed,” Sheikh acknowledged. “I saw the Russian soldier alive and on his feet. I approached him with the pipe in my hand and I hit him across his body… five times, and his head. The soldier began making a grunting noise… I hit the soldier with pipe while others attacked him.”

Sheikh will be deported abroad following his release, according to the Justice Ministry.

Norzhich’s brother, Michael, called the terror convict’s pending release “inconceivable,” noting it is so close to the 25th........

© The Times of Israel