JERUSALEM — Israeli police arrested four Palestinian men Wednesday and charged them with a December stabbing that claimed the life of American tourist Kristine Luken.
Israeli police alleged that the men were part of a larger cell that planned and carried out several attacks on hikers in the hills around Jerusalem and the West Bank. Police said the motive was to avenge the assassination of a top Hamas militant, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai last January.
In the most recent attack, Virginia resident Kristine Luken, 44, was stabbed to death while she was hiking in a forest outside Jerusalem. Her friend Kaye Susan Wilson, 46, a British emigre to Israel, also was stabbed but managed to escape.
The two women knew each other through an evangelical group known as the Church’s Ministry Among Jewish People. Luken made several trips to Israel as a staff member of the ministry.
On Dec. 18, Luken had gone hiking with Wilson, who lives in the settlement of Givat Ze’ev and was a trained tour guide. Wilson suggested a hike in the wooded hills outside Jerusalem to the archaeological site of Hanot.
“We had gone a bit off the trail and were sitting on a hill when two Arabs passed,” Wilson said when she recounted the attack to reporters last month. She remembered feeling that something wasn’t quite right and urged Luken to return to the trail.
“We started to return. . . . Then I suddenly heard something. It happened so fast. They came and they attacked us.”
Wilson said two men wielded a serrated bread knife as they threatened her friend and her. They grabbed several items of jewelry, then stabbed Wilson in the torso.
“I will never forget it. They turned me around and stabbed me here,” she said, gesturing to the upper left shoulder. She said she was stabbed “more than a dozen” times and then left for dead.
“I could feel that it didn’t strike my heart. So I pretended I was dead. I could hear my friend struggling next to me. Her breath sounded like little bubbles gurgling.”
Wilson managed to struggle to a nearby parking lot, where a picnicking family found her. Israeli police found Luken’s body the next day.
Jerusalem Police Chief Aharon Franco said the men responsible for the attack were all from the West Bank and had confessed to the attack during interrogations. They told police they had intended to kill a Jew and were surprised to discover that Luken was a Christian.
Franco said the men are being investigated for involvement in other crimes dating to 1997.
