Tel Aviv court sentences 'DNA Rapist' to 25 years in prison

"Tel Aviv District Court on Tuesday sentenced Eitan Farhi, known to police as the "DNA Rapist," to 25 years in prison for raping and sodomizing two women over the course of two years.

The first rape involves a 20-year-old woman from Tel Aviv who had left her apartment to take out the trash. The second victim was a 16-year-old girl who was attacked while walking home from a youth group activity in Rehovot.

Farhi, 40, was also convicted of public indecent assault, rape by aggravated assault, acts of sodomy, suborning perjury, robbery and attacking a police officer. The attacks occurred in the center of the country, but he was convicted on account of a DNA sample that he gave to police after being questioned for the 2006 murder of Anat Pleiner, a lawyer from Ramat Hasharon.

Throughout the trial, Farhi's defense attorneys, Amikam Hadar and Hedva Shapira, argued against the case's legality, pointing out that the evidence being used against their client was obtained in an unjust manner. They claim that the DNA sample Farhi gave them in the framework of a murder trial has since been held by the police illegally. Farhi's defense lawyers argued that it was illegal to compare the DNA sample given as evidence in an unrelated murder trial with the sperm found in the rape crime scenes, and to use such evidence to convict their client of rape..."

Source: Ofra Edelman, Haaretz Correspondent, and Haaretz Service. Tel Aviv court sentences 'DNA Rapist' to 25 years in prison. Haaretz.com (6 May 2008) [FullText]