Rayed Mahmoud Jamil Sheik, a Palestinian policeman who participated in the lynch of two IDF reservists in Ramallah, was found guilty of two murder accounts on Tuesday. He will be sentenced on Wednesday.

Rayed Mahmoud Jamil Sheik, 26, of the Gaza Strip, was captured last October 26. He was serving at the Ramallah police station on the day of the lynching, in which Sgt.-Maj. Vadim Norovitch and Sgt.-Maj. Yossi Avrahami were brutally murdered.

Sheik, who was on guard duty at the entrance to the police station, saw the car with yellow Israeli plates approaching after it lost its way. "The accused and the other Palestinian police saw that one of the drivers was wearing an IDF uniform and went out to the street, signaled the vehicle to halt at the side of the road, and ordered the IDF soldiers to get out," Sheik´s charge sheet read.

Speaking Hebrew, Sheik asked the soldiers what they were doing in Ramallah and they told him were lost. Sheik translated this for his officer.

With guns pointed at their heads, the two were ordered into the station. On the way, another Palestinian policeman arrived and hit Avrahami in the chest.

Once inside, the accused and the other policemen handed them over to the commander, with a rank equivalent to colonel. They then went outside to prevent a raging crowd returning from a funeral from entering the station, the charge sheet read.

But after a while, the accused joined the mob and went to the room where the two were held, pausing along the way to pick up an iron pipe about 40 cm. long.

"The accused approached Cpl. Vadim Novesche who was standing and struck him four or five times in the head and in the rest of his body until he started bleeding and moaning," the charge sheet read.

According to the charge sheet, other Palestinian policemen and officers were in the room at the time. With his hands covered in blood, the accused left the room to wash. After he saw Novesche tossed from the second-floor window, he again beat him.

After that, he and the other policemen involved fled back inside the station, where the commander told them that if they were questioned, they should say that it was civilians who killed the soldiers.

Sheik denied the charges. "The Palestinian police force taught me to be a policeman, not a murderer," he said. He will be sentenced tomorrow, in Camp Ofer military court. (© 1995-2003, The Jerusalem Post 08/26/03)