World

Fugitive Teen Charged In Israel

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

March 22, 1999 / 8:08 AM EST / CBS

A day after Israel's high court closed the extradition option for good, Israeli prosecutors Monday charged a Maryland teenager with first-degree murder in the choking, slashing and beating death of another youth in the United States.

Samuel Sheinbein, 18, fled to Israel three days after the mutilated corpse of Alfredo Tello Jr. was found in Montgomery County, Maryland, in September 1997.

At Monday's hearing, prosecutor Hadassah Naor charged Sheinbein with premeditated murder, saying he and an accomplice strangled Tello, 19, chopped up his dead body with an electric saw and burned parts of it to avoid being discovered.

Sheinbein stared straight ahead during the hearing, which was held in Hebrew. No date has been set for the start of the trial, which has to wrap up within nine months.

Defense attorney David Libai would not say how his client would plead. If convicted, Sheinbein faces life in prison, the same maximum penalty he would have faced in the U.S.

The case has strained relations between Israel and the United States. U.S. officials have expressed disappointment over Sunday's court decision preventing extradition, but said they would cooperate with Israeli prosecutors.

Dozens of witnesses, including U.S. police investigators, will have to be flown to Israel from the United States for the trial.

Monday, Sheinbein was ordered held until April 19 when the court will consider a prosecution request to keep him in detention until the end of the trial.

Libai said he would not object to keeping his client in jail, saying it was "in the public interest to keep him in custody."

Israel's Supreme Court had ruled that Sheinbein is an Israeli citizen and cannot be extradited to the United States for trial.

In an unusual move, Israel's attorney general appealed the Supreme Court's 3-2 decision, asking the court to convene a larger bench to reconsider the matter. On Sunday, the high court turned down the request for a new hearing.

Sheinbein was born and raised in the United States. However, the high court said the defendant was entitled to Israeli citizenship through his father Sol, who holds an Israeli passport. Israeli law protects citizens from extradition.

The decision drew criticism from U.S. law enforcement officials and politicians and infuriated the victim's family.

The judges agreed that the extradition law was flawed but as long as it law remained on the books, the court was obliged to uphold the law.

Libai noted Monday that parliament was considering a bill to change the law. "I do not believe that Israel should be a shelter for criminals," the former justice minister said, adding that he took the case to show that the law must be changed.

According to the indictment, Sheinbein and alleged accomplice Aaron Needle picked Tello up from his place of work in Maryland and decided to kill him. Needle hanged himself by a bedsheet in a U.S. jal last April.

"The accused and Needle cruelly attacked Tello, strangling him with a rope wrapped around his neck, hitting him with a blunt object several times on the head and slashing him several times on the neck and chest with a sharp object with the intent of causing his death," the charge sheet said.