When murderers seek release
In the past few days, two prominent murderers have sought release from their life sentences. One of them will be going home, and that's shameful.
Susan Atkins, the brutal accomplice of Charles Manson in the infamous 1969 Manson Family murders of actress Sharon Tate and six other people, sought compassionate release to die of cancer outside of prison. In Israel, the cold-blooded Palestinian terrorist Samir Kuntar is due to be exchanged for the remains of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped across the Lebanese border in 2006.
Although Atkins is largely immobile and barely alive, the Parole Board, responding to pleas from relatives of the Manson Family victims and many other Californians, decided that her crimes were so horrific that it would, in essence, shock the conscience to give her compassionate release.
Israel, in a decision that must be condemned, decided to free Kuntar because of the importance it places on both the freeing of its soldiers from captivity and or the recovery of their bodies. My response? Sorry, that's not a reason to release a murderer like Kuntar, who in 1979 shot to death an Israeli father in front of his four-year-old daughter and then smashed the girl's brains out with a rifle butt.
Remember the Achille Lauro hijacking in 1985 and the murder of wheelchair-bound American Leon Klinghoffer? Kuntar's colleagues hijacked the cruise ship in an effort to free him. The disastrous 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon was sparked by the same cross-border raid in which the two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped.
At some point, enough is enough. I know, that's easy for me to say. But the release of Samir Kuntar, even if he is killed later by Israeli agents, shocks the conscience.