Outrage at prison wedding plans of Rabin’s assassin

ISRAEL’S prison director said yesterday he would forbid the killer of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to marry in prison, after reports of his wedding plans caused national uproar.

Rabin’s daughter, Dalia Rabin-Pelosoff, was hospitalised with an irregular heartbeat after hearing reports that Yigal Amir was planning to marry Larisa Trimbobler an Ultra-Orthodox, divorced mother of four in the spring, said a family friend.

Amir is serving a life sentence for shooting Rabin at a peace rally in November 1995. Amir, an ultra-nationalist, believed Rabin, who led a centre-left government, had betrayed Israel by concluding peace deals with the Palestinians. The controversy provided a rare occasion for agreement between the ruling right and opposition left. Shimon Peres, head of centre-left Labour and foreign minister under Rabin, said parliament should pass a special law to prohibit the marriage, adding that he feared the wedding would be a first step towards Amir’s eventual release.

Yuval Shteinitz, of the right-wing ruling Likud party, agreed that the law “enabling abominable murderers such as Yigal Amir to get married in jail should be changed”.

Israeli law does not guarantee inmates the right to marry or have conjugal visits, but inmates can petition courts for improvements in their conditions, legal sources said.