Yitzhak Rabin's convicted assassin said Sunday he is happy the prime minister is dead and suggested that killing him convinced Israelis to vote Rabin's Labor Party out of government.
Yigal Amir, dressed in brown prison fatigues and a black skullcap, sat amid six policemen as his lawyers appealed a lower court's sentence of life in prison for Rabin's murder plus six years for wounding a bodyguard."I am not sorry he is dead," Amir told the Supreme Court. "I am even happy he is dead because he was a traitor to his country and died a traitor."
Smiling, Amir said he "had to do something extreme to wake up the nation" and prevent Rabin from continuing to trade land for peace with the Arabs.
After the Nov. 4 killing, he said, "people opened their eyes" and voted out Rabin's successor, Shimon Peres.
Peres narrowly lost the May 29 election to right-wing Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposed Rabin's fast-paced peacemaking with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
In appealing the March sentence, Amir is asking a three-judge panel to reduce the murder charge to manslaughter and allow the additional six-year term to run concurrently with the main sentence instead of consecutively. Judge Eliezer Goldberg said a decision would be reached in the coming days.
In Israel, a life prison term usually means a convict will serve between 16 and 25 years.
Amir's lawyer said the 26-year-old former law student was "unbalanced and irrational" and, therefore, could not be held accountable for his actions.
"Yigal Amir is not a man who weighs pros and cons," defense attorney Shmuel Flishman said. "If you bring a robot to court you can't convict him of murder."
Amir contradicted his attorney, telling the court: "It isn't true what my lawyers say about me. I am balanced."
Judge Eliyahu Matza said Flishman's theory was flawed because terrorists don't weigh consequences either. "Should we let them out too?" he asked.
The defense also renewed claims suggesting the presence of a second shooter at the Tel Aviv peace rally where Rabin was killed.
Attorney Gabi Shahar hinted that a second assassin might have belonged to the police or the Shin Bet security service. "Somebody close to Rabin could have used the opportunity when Amir started firing," he said.