Jaffa man Fadi Maluk, 24, was indicted in Tel Aviv District Court on Thursday for the murder of his two sisters last month.
The bodies of Hiyat and Nura were found in their beds in Tel Aviv’s Jaffa quarter last month. Both had apparently been stabbed to death.
Prosecutors said Maluk’s motive was a conflict over his sisters’ lifestyles.
Maluk is charged with using a 19.5 centimeter (7.7 inches) long knife to stab the two in the early morning hours after a meal before the start of the daily fast for the month of Ramadan.
Maluk who has served time in prison in the past, was also charged with injuring another relative, and has previously been convicted of threatening Hayat. Prosecutors asked the court to keep him in custody for the duration of his trial.
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The siblings lived with 10 other family members in a small, cramped apartment. They were known to social welfare authorities for various problems over the years. Maluk had been under psychiatric care.
Prosecutors say he stabbed Hayat in the neck, face and arms. One of his brothers tried to stop him after that murder but he continued on to Nura’s room, where she, her son and Hayat’s son were sleeping.
According to the prosecution, Maluk stabbed Nura while shouting “die, die.” His mother also tried to stop him but he refused and also injured another family member in the process. Another brother was finally able to wrest the knife away from him.
After the stabbings, Maluk called the police emergency hotline at 5 A.M. and confessed to the crimes. “Hello, I am Fadi Maluk and I murdered my two sisters. They were sleeping and it’s an old quarrel. I took a knife and slit their throats,” he told the police.
A police officer who came to the apartment said Maluk put out his hands to be arrested and handcuffed, saying: “I murdered them, I can’t suffer [any more]. I feel suffocated, I can’t breathe.”
Maluk said his sisters went out with men and made him see it an attempt “to spite him.”
He later told police that he did not remember any details about the incident. “I saw black and heard my brother Mustafa yelling. I gave him the knife. The knife was in my hand. That’s how I woke up and saw that all the house was bloody and the little boy was bloody. After I saw my wife crying I called the police straight away. I’m very sorry, very sorry about what I did,” he told investigators.
The police said the suspect had also argued with both sisters earlier that night.
Family members who were in the apartment also told the police about the murder. One of them told the police that a few days before the murders, Maluk said: “Wait and see, this Ramadan will be the blackest Ramadan of your lives.”
Police had been summoned to the apartment several times in the past in response to neighbors’ complaints. One neighbor told Haaretz “You could often hear them shrieking – there were many arguments and there was always shouting.”
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