Yigal Amir - Biography

Biography

Yigal Amir was born to a religious Yemenite Jewish family in Herzliya, Israel. His mother, Geula, was a kindergarten teacher, and his father, Shlomo, was a sofer. Yigal Amir attended a Haredi elementary school in Herzliya and a high school yeshiva in Tel Aviv. He then joined the Israel Defense Forces as a Hesder student, combining army training in the Golani Brigade with religious study at Yeshivat Kerem B'Yavneh.

Amir was a law and computer science student at Bar-Ilan University and a right-wing radical who had strenuously opposed Rabin's signing of the Oslo Accords. During his studies at Bar-Ilan University, he was active in organizing protest rallies.

During his years as an activist, Amir became friendly with Avishai Raviv, to whom he revealed his plan to kill Rabin. While Raviv posed as a right-wing radical, he was working for the Shabak, the Israeli secret service.

While in prison, Amir became engaged to Larisa Trembovler after they exchanged letters and spoke on the phone. In January 2004, the Israel Prison Service refused to allow Amir to marry in jail, and this was upheld in April 2004 by a ruling of the Tel Aviv District Court. However, in August 2004, they held a proxy marriage, giving Amir's father "power of attorney" to transfer a wedding ring to the bride. In July 2005, their marriage was validated by a rabbinical court, but not by the Israeli Ministry of the Interior. The prison administration issued a statement saying that its policy on "conjugal visits" would not change. In February 2006, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz ordered the Interior Ministry to register them as a married couple.

In late August 2005, Amir applied to the prison authorities for permission to conceive a child through in vitro fertilisation. In March 2006, Amir was caught handing his wife a plastic bag with semen. After the incident, a disciplinary tribunal denied him visits for 30 days and phone calls for 14 days. He was fined NIS 100 (then US$21). When the treatments were withheld due to a petition by several members of Knesset, Yigal Amir refused to eat. After being warned that hunger strikes are in violation of prison regulations, some of his privileges were canceled. Up until October 20, 2006 the Shabak security service had opposed unsupervised visits. Four days later, Amir was allowed a 10-hour-long conjugal visit with Larisa Amir. Five months later it was reported that Larisa was pregnant, and on October 28, 2007 she gave birth to a son: Yinon Eliya Shalom. The brit milah took place on November 4, 2007, the twelfth anniversary of Rabin's assassination, in Rimonim prison after Amir's appeal to the district court to be present at his son's circumcision was accepted.