Israel Arrest Terror Cell in Fatal Shooting Attack

JERUSALEM, Israel -- A week and a half after an Israeli university student was gunned down, security forces arrested five members of the Tanzim militia terror cell that planned and carried out the attack.

Danny Gonen, 25, from Lod, had been studying electrical engineering at Bar-Ilan University when he was killed.

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) lifted a gag order on the joint operation with the IDF and a counterterrorism unit of the Judea and Samaria police force on Wednesday.

During interrogation, Muhammed Abu Shaheen, 30, confessed to shooting Gonen after he and a friend returned from an outing at a spring near the town of Dolev in the Binyamin region, northwest of Jerusalem, on June 19.

Shaheen, a former member of Fatah's Force 17, is still on the Palestinian Authority's payroll. He served a two-year sentence from 2006 to 2008 for masterminding terror attacks. The Shin Bet said he carried out six shooting attacks in 2014, one that wounded an IDF soldier.

According to the report, Gonen and a friend were driving home when Shaheen, feigning help, flagged them down and then shot them both at point blank range, fatally injuring Gonen and wounding his friend.

Security forces arrested the shooter and four other cell members at their homes in Kalandia, between Jerusalem and Ramallah, after tracing a call from Shaheen to brag about the shooting.

All five are members of the Fatah-affiliated Tanzim militia, which carried out many terror attacks during the second intifada (2000 to 2004). Marwan Bargouti, the former leader of the Fatah militia, is serving five consecutive life sentences for masterminding terror attacks during the intifada and for the murder of four Israelis and a Greek Orthodox priest. 

One of the five terrorists, Asraf Amar, 24, works with P.A. military intelligence. A second, Osama Assad, 29, was released in the prisoner exchange for former IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, kidnapped in a cross-border attack near the Gaza Strip in 2006. Hamas held Shalit in Gaza for more than five years before releasing him in a lopsided prisoner exchange in 2011.

The third and fourth cell members, Amjad Aduan, 35, who served time in 2008 for a bombing attack and for arms dealing, and Muhammed Aduan, 37, confessed to serving as lookouts, supplying ammunition and hiding the handgun used in the attack.