When the two met, he eagerly agreed to accompany Awana, by taxi, to the A-Ram junction, north of Jerusalem. It was here that Hassan al-Qadi had said he would leave a car for Awana.
After finding the vehicle, Awana drove off with Ofir towards Ramallah. The teenager would have been acutely aware, along with the rest of this troubled land, that two Israeli reservists had been seized and slaughtered in the town just a few months back, in October 2000. The pair had been savagely beaten, tossed from a window and torn apart by a baying crowd thirsty for their blood.
But did Ofir Rahum sense that a terrible trap might lie in wait for him too?
Awana pulled over to the side of the road when they got to El Bireh, not far from the village of Psigot.
The ambush happened just as they had planned it. Awana leaped out of the car and al-Qadi, accompanied by two masked Palestinian hit-team members, suddenly appeared at the passenger door. Yanking it open and shoving a Kalashnikov AK-47 into the terrified lad’s face, al-Qadi screamed at him to get out. Panicked, Ofir remained seated, shaking his head wildly.
At this unexpected defiance – the group had obviously thought that fear would render their captive more compliant, so that they could take him away, presumably to extend his suffering – al-Qadi reacted with extreme violence. Enraged, he fired several shots into Ofir’s legs, then attempted to drag him from the car. Still resisting his attacker, the teenager received a hail of bullets in his face and upper torso.
Ofir Rahum, expecting an enjoyable experience with an attractive woman, instead ended up shot dead by a band of terrorists. His once trusted and familiar internet had betrayed him with lethal consequences.
Awana climbed back into the car and followed the others as they sped away, leaving one of their number to dispose of Ofir. The youth’s corpse, riddled with 15 bullets, was driven a short distance before being unceremoniously dumped at the dusty roadside.
Shortly after the slaying, Awana met a girlfriend for lunch, visited an aunt in the hospital, then attended a defensive driving course in Jerusalem. It was business as usual for the cold-blooded internet siren.
The anxious parents of Ofir Rahum, concerned when he failed to return home, questioned his friends, soon discovering that he had not attended school that day. His body was discovered that same evening, but was unrecognisable and presumed to be that of a Palestinian collaborator dispatched by a bunch of vigilantes.
Palestinian security officials laid claim to the victim’s remains. However, because of the extreme mutilation of the victim’s features by gunshot wounds, investigators had difficulty identifying the body. Later, the vigilante theory now dropped, they suggested it was that of a Palestinian, apparently shot dead by Israeli security officials. Israel vehemently denied this, and noted that shots had been fired at an army convoy in the area of El Bireh.
The bickering continued, with the Israelis arguing that it was the Palestinians who were responsible for the murder.
The Palestinians continued to advertise the fact that they had discovered a body, but declined to offer a description or any other information. When the Civil Administration in Judaea and Samaria and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) received a report on the missing boy, Israel once again pressed for details. The Palestinians stuck to their claim that they held a body of one of their own. Not to be discouraged by this, senior Israeli officials supplied them with a full description of Ofir Rahum and other important details, demanding immediate co-operation.
Under mounting pressure, Palestinian security officials soon confirmed Israel’s suspicions and Ofir’s body was handed over to the District Coordinating Office in Ramallah.
‘We take this kind of murder very seriously, since it is harmful to the PA,’ stated a Palestinian security officer. He also commented that both nationalistic and criminal motives were being investigated.
Despite the continuing Israeli–Palestinian conflict, WAFA, a news agency controlled by the Palestinian Authority, denounced the murder of Ofir Rahum, stating that it fully opposed attacks against civilians. Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, also condemned the killing, saying, ‘The cruel murder of a young man is extremely grave and we will act to ensure those responsible are brought to justice.’
Ofir Rahum was the fourth Israeli to be murdered in the Ramallah area since the outbreak of the latest intifada.
The invulnerability Mona Jaud Awana assumed she enjoyed by using the internet under a false name did not last long. She was arrested a few weeks after the killing by Israeli agents and an undercover army unit at the home of her parents in the village of Bir Naballah. An examination of Ofir Rahum’s computer had led the authorities straight there.
It emerged that Awana was a freelance journalist and resident of East Jerusalem who carried an Israeli identity card. Palestinian sources in Ramallah quickly let it be known that it was highly unlikely that this former psychology student at Bir Zeit University was involved in the murder. And at first Awana refused to help the police. ‘Despite the fact that she has been detained for many hours, she is not co-operating at this stage and we still don’t have all the details,’ said Israel Police Inspector General Shlomo Aharonishky. ‘She is denying her involvement. We still don’t have the motive or what lay behind the deed, but the investigation is still going on.’ But, he added, ‘from evidence collected at her home and elsewhere, we believe she is connected to it’.
The Al Fatah activists to whom Awana was closely affiliated also distanced themselves from the murder. And her brother said she did not have a computer at home and was not familiar with the workings of the internet. A spurious allegation indeed, as Awana is known to have made regular visits to internet cafes and ably navigated her way around the web.
Mona Jaud Awana was charged with Ofir Rahum’s murder, which she subsequently admitted playing her part in, and brought before the Beit El Military Court, near Ramallah. Without one shred of remorse, she proudly announced that the murder had been committed on behalf of ‘the Palestinian people’.
And, while Prime Minister Barak was busy praising the IDF and General Security Service for the efficient operation that had led to Awana’s arrest, he took the opportunity to warn that Israel would apprehend and severely punish those others who had a hand in Ofir’s slaughter.
As Awana’s trial loomed, many furious Israelis expressed their fears that a gaggle of eager left-wing Jewish lawyers would clamour to represent the notorious defendant.
In November 2002, a Zionist military court passed a life sentence on Mona Jaud Awana for participation in the kidnap and murder of a Zionist settler, Ofir Rahum. The court found Mona guilty of ‘intentionally causing the death of a man’, which, in the Zionist penal code, is a crime tantamount to first-degree murder.
The body of Ofir Rahum was later returned to his parents so that they could bury their son. Candle-lit vigils were also held in remembrance of this young man, conned out of his life by a group of predators. Emotions ran high, especially after it was made public that the murdered teenager was initially thought to have been a Palestinian collaborator.
Hundreds attended Ofir’s funeral in Ashkelon. His school principal described him as ‘an outstanding student and a wonderful person, who had been blessed with the support of a loving family’.
In the wake of the Rahum’s slaying, Chief-Superintendent Meir Zohar, head of the Israel Police Computer Crime Department, announced that internet-related crime was on the increase. He stated that the tragedy was the first instance that he knew of in which the internet had been used specifically to entrap a targeted terrorist victim.
‘The criminal underworld realised the potential of the internet a long time ago,’ Zohar said. ‘It allows criminals to masquerade as different people and provides them with a large degree of anonymity.’
As well as all the familiar crimes that the internet provides a haven for, such as hacking, gambling, drug-smuggling, rape and paedophilia, young people were often the perpetrators of cyber crimes, he explained, and those juve
niles needed to be made fully aware of the consequences of their actions. ‘I think what is needed is a policy of education and information to make internet users, especially minors, more aware of the risk they are taking,’ he said.
On the anniversary of the Computer Crimes Department, which often keeps tabs on chatroom conversations, Zohar claimed that this electronic eavesdropping had been particularly effective on two previous occasions. The first had been when police had monitored discussions between several people threatening to commit suicide. Investigators established contact and provided them with the necessary treatment.
The other case involved a chatroom participant who claimed that she was a victim of incestuous abuse. Police immediately opened an investigation into her allegations.
Shula Rahum, Ofir’s mother, observed, ‘Maybe parents should warn their kids about computers like they do with drugs and diseases. They should browse through their chats to see whom they are communicating with and where they are going.’
Ofir’s parents had no idea what he had been doing, nor who had so skilfully seduced him via his computer. Shalom Rahum says that he only found out afterwards, from his son’s school friends, and that was far too late.
SATOMI MITARAI: SURFED TO DESTRUCTION
‘So you’re saying that every anti-social 11-year-old is going to kill someone? Or are you insinuating that every anti-social person is going to go on a killing rampage? I’m anti-social but I’m not gonna go around killing people. Though sometimes it’d be nice…’
INTERNET CHATROOM USER ON THE JAPANESE SCHOOLGIRL KILLER CASE
On June 2001, the watching world recoiled as news of a former caretaker at Ikeda Elementary School, in a suburb of Osaka, 250 miles west of Tokyo, went berserk and stormed the building armed with a kitchen knife.
The 39-year-old, who had a long history of mental illness, rampaged through the schoolyard and classrooms, slashing away at as many children as he could lay his hands on. He had managed to stab eight of them to death before he was brought to ground.
The judge presiding over the trial of Mamoru Takuma at Osaka District Court wasted little time in sentencing him to death by hanging, choosing to reject his defence of insanity and instead finding him entirely culpable of committing the murders of seven girls and a boy aged between six and eight, who had cowered in their classrooms during his onslaught.
Takuma had also attacked a number of other people that fateful day, injuring 13 small children and two teachers. The judge had no qualms about sentencing this man to death, just as Takuma himself had felt no compunction about massacring his way through Ikeda Elementary School. The convicted killer had even informed the court that he would have killed more had he had the forethought to carry out his spree at a local kindergarten.
Without any obvious displays of remorse, Takuma, who suffered from a long-term schizophrenic condition, was hauled out of the public eye by guards, to await his fate. Japan was faced yet again with the fallout from another example of extreme violence in its school system.
Tuesday, 1 June 2004 saw the emergence of another terrifying attack on a young person at her school, only this time, rather than some deranged, socially inadequate adult, her killer was one of her peers, both girls having attended Sasebo Elementary School in Nagasaki Prefecture.
That day, an 11-year-old girl calmly approached her classmate, pretty 12-year-old Satomi Mitarai, and unleashed an explosion of violence against her with a knife. Her throat and arms slashed, Satomi slumped to the floor, instantly losing consciousness from massive loss of blood. She died later that day.
Her killer, for legal reasons known only as ‘Girl A’ but later dubbed ‘Nevada’ on the internet, left her to die, returning to her classroom covered in her victim’s blood, to greet her shocked teacher and fellow pupils.
Unsurprisingly, the story made the headlines around the world, for nobody could comprehend how this child had reached the point where she was able to methodically butcher a school friend in broad daylight. It came as a huge shock, this grisly homicide, the like of which could have been seen in any number of gory ‘slasher’ movies. In fact, this young female killer had quite a predilection for such dubious entertainment. This fascination was just one of the factors that led her to act on the appalling fantasies she had developed, most of which revolved around killing.
At her trial, Nevada was quickly sentenced and placed in a juvenile facility where, it is said, she will languish until at least 2013.
The ghastly nature of her crime, and the constant media notoriety it generated, marred the psyches of those around her, perhaps for ever. However, her story did not end with her incarceration. Rather, her actions that June day would spawn an internet phenomenon – dark, perverse, but not altogether impossible to understand, given today’s often murky online climate.
Tucked within the recesses of the vast Japanese realm of the web, a photograph depicting a school class was posted. Two of the girls in the picture are instantly identifiable.
On the far left stands a young girl, grinning broadly, wearing spectacles and a green sweatshirt. It is Satomi Mitarai, and the obviously delighted child presents to the camera a triumphant finger-sign of victory.
Beside Satomi is another girl, lacking all the joy and vitality of her glossy-haired classmate. This girl has a strange, unreadable expression on her face. Like a spirit in a ghostly portrait, a dark harbinger of things to come, this child would one day be Satomi’s executioner.
The enduring image of an outwardly normal-looking pre-teen, clutching a box-cutting knife and with murder in her heart, has scored a deep groove in the communal consciousness of the internet. Stories detailing Nevada’s crime were later posted on online forums across Europe, the United States and Asia. Especially in Japan, with its steady undercurrent of horror movies and its creation of extremely graphic and often sexually violent cartoon imagery, where this kind of killer culture is keenly embraced, Nevada became an instant focus of attention.
Indeed, an online cartoon character would be based upon her. It did not take long for this juvenile murderer to be assigned the moniker of ‘Nevada-tan’; the ‘tan’ suffix presumably used to connote a child’s pronunciation of the honorific ‘-chan’.
The police investigation into the shocking murder of Satomi Mitarai and the background of her young slayer revealed that Nevada was, at least initially, a relatively normal child, with no overt history of bad behaviour, let alone a propensity for violence. It was noted that she had a keen interest in horror films and any other form of entertainment featuring murder and mayhem, from TV shows to comic books.
A particular favourite of hers is the Japanese cult film Battle Royale. Made by Kinjt Fukasaku in 2000, it is the story of a group of young students who are taken to a tiny, remote island and handed a map, food and various weapons, then made to hunt and kill each other in ways that would have had the schoolboys of The Lord of the Flies running for cover. The film, exceptionally popular the world over, was consumed voraciously by the impressionable Nevada.
Another of her favourite movies was Voice. This charts the descent of a girl who goes insane and embarks upon a savage killing spree. Though Nevada enjoyed a diet of violent films like these at the time, it seems that she had an outlet in the form of basketball. However, after being forced out of her team, at the behest of her mother, to focus on improving her school results, Nevada chose to retreat further into her fantasy world of death, becoming surly with her parents and those around her.
By now, the lure of the internet had started to overtake all else. She began collecting ‘flash’ horror movies on a website she had started, and would frequent many violent sites, constantly searching for more bloody fodder. She would regularly access a site, viewed by these authors, that features a short story entitled The Red Room, in which a boy is slashed to death. There is a warning on the opening page advising that those with a ‘weak heart’ should steer clear.
Concentrating as much of her time as she could on the internet, and r
egarding the real world as superfluous, she aimed to induce other web visitors to join her site and share in her domain by commencing her own blog – an online live diary – detailing her interests, and even regaling those that came to see with gruesome stories and cooking recipes.
The following extract appeared on the website – now removed – run by Nevada:
Birthday 21 November 1992
Blood type A [in Japan, blood type is said to determine fate, like a horoscope]
Hobbies Watching movies
Favourite animal Cat
Favourite sport Basketball
Favourite music [no answer given]
What do you treasure? That’s a se*cr*et!
Also worthy of note is her interest in the TV horror series Monday Mystery Theatre, in which a number of unfortunate victims are brutally dispatched with box-cutters. Nevada later threatened a boy with such a tool, and ten days after the incident led Satomi Mitarai into an empty classroom, covered her eyes and slit the girl’s throat with one.
Nevada and Satomi Mitarai had been close friends. They were in an art class together, played basketball together, shared a group diary and often passed notes on an internet ‘home page’ bulletin board. But Nevada turned into a mortal enemy after Satomi made the gross error of slighting her about her physical appearance, using her online journal to do so.
Nevada demanded an apology for what she perceived as an insult, the worse for coming from someone she considered a friend. Satomi refused, instead branding her ‘pretentious’. The final straw came when Mitarai typed another message commenting on Nevada’s weight. This marked her out for death. The message was posted four days before she was murdered.
On the day of the killing, the girls’ teacher said she first noticed something unusual when the two had been missing from class. But, before a search for them was begun, Nevada returned, her hands and clothing spattered with Satomi Mitarai’s blood. After the police were called, Nevada confessed to the murder, sobbing, ‘I have done a bad thing.’
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