A Trail of Clues Leading to Victims And Heartbreak
JERUSALEM — One suspect took 10 years to complete a college degree in Sharia law, according to relatives, because his studies kept being interrupted by stints in Israeli prison. The other quit school at 13, has been in poor health since a swimming accident put him in a coma in 2007, and has worked as a blacksmith, a porter, and clothes salesman, several people who know him said.
The two Palestinian men, Israel’s prime suspects in the June 12 kidnapping and killing of three teenagers, live perhaps 500 yards apart in Hebron, the West Bank’s largest city, and pray together dawn and dusk in a neighborhood mosque. Amer Abu Aisha, 33, the swimmer, frequented the barber shop owned by Marwan Qawasmeh, 29, the college graduate, who learned to cut hair in prison and was unable to get a job as an imam — in part, an uncle said, because of “his political affiliation.”
“They are familiar with Hamas, everybody knows they support Hamas, but I can’t say they are officially part of the Hamas military wing,” said Shlomi Eldar, whose 2011 book, “Getting to Know Hamas,” includes material about members of the Qawasmeh family carrying out 13 suicide bombings in the second Palestinian intifada. “I’m sure they didn’t get any green light from the leadership of Hamas, they just thought it was the right time to act.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/02/world/middleeast/details-emerge-in-deaths-of-israeli-teenagers.html?ref=middleeast&_r=0