JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Defying a life prison term in isolation, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassin has secretly married by proxy, his bride said Friday.
Larisa Trimbobler said she hoped her in-absentia wedding to Yigal Amir last month would help overturn a court ban on conjugal visits for the ultranationalist who shot Rabin at a 1995 rally in a bid to block peace deals with the Palestinians.
Jewish law requires that two men witness a bride receiving her ring and marriage contract from the groom. According to Israeli media, Amir empowered his father to carry out the ritual in his stead and may have joined in by telephone.
"He (Amir) simply empowered as emissary a relative who had permission to visit him," Trimbobler told Channel Ten television, adding that two rabbis endorsed the proxy nuptials.
"There is no sin here, no crime. We await word from the courts on consummation," said Trimbobler, her hair covered in accordance with religious tradition for married Jewish women.
Israeli authorities, who have kept Amir under 24-hour watch in his cell, citing concern he could pass political messages to supporters outside, challenged the validity of the marriage.
"The convict has not received two male visitors at the same time in recent weeks, such that the authenticity of this supposed wedding in terms of Jewish law is seriously in doubt," Prisons Service spokesman Ofer Leffler said.
WEDDING RING
He said body searches would have prevented Amir from bringing a ring to pass to his visitors. "We are checking the possibility that Amir's father came to a meeting wearing the ring on his finger, as if it were his own," Leffler said.
An immigrant from the former Soviet Union and a divorced mother of four, Trimbobler corresponded with Amir and got rare rights to visit him in an isolation block where the former law student is serving a life term with no chance of parole.
Amir created a national stir when he first filed for permission to marry in January. Many Israelis across the political spectrum said Amir should not be "rewarded" for his unprecedented crime. Human rights experts sided with him, calling marriage a basic right.
In May, a Tel Aviv court said that in principle Amir could still wed but ruled out conjugal visits, noting that he had voiced no remorse for the assassination and accusing him of trying to incite supporters to adopt his extreme views.
Lawyers for the would-be couple said they would appeal to the Supreme Court. Leffler said Trimbobler's wedding claims may have endangered this final legal bid.
"As far as we are concerned, this couple can consummate via emissary as well," Leffler said.
