The State Prosecutor’s Office has asked the Supreme Court to toughen the conviction and 22-year prison sentence of Denis Mokin. Mokin shot dead 19-year-old Diar Omari after a traffic dispute near Gan Ner in northern Israel in May 2023.
The Nof HaGalil-Nazareth District Court convicted Mokin of murder. But a majority of the panel ruled that he had acted out of indifference rather than with intent to kill. Prosecutors want the Supreme Court to overturn that finding and impose a harsher sentence.
According to the indictment, on May 6, 2023, Mokin was driving his mother’s car while under the influence of alcohol and drugs and while disqualified from driving. Angered by the way Omari was driving ahead of him, he jumped out of his moving car without engaging the handbrake, leaving it to roll on its own. He then drew a licensed Glock pistol and fired several shots into the air.
When Omari got back into his car, Mokin blocked the door to stop him from closing it or driving away and fired again above his head. The two men grappled until they fell to the ground by the roadside barrier. During the struggle, Mokin shot Omari twice at point-blank range, hitting him in the shoulder and the heart.
Omari managed to get up and ran toward his car. Mokin fired three more shots at his back, emptying the magazine.
Mokin approached Omari as he lay bleeding on the road, then left without offering help or calling emergency services. Under questioning, he said: “He took two bullets, I have nothing to check if he’s alive.” He also said: “Every dog has his day, terrorist, he deserves it.” After fleeing home, he told his sister to tell police that she had been driving the car.
The district court judges split over Mokin’s state of mind. The majority found that because the fatal shots were fired during a struggle, it had not been proven that he planned the killing or intended to kill. The dissenting judge disagreed. She pointed to the point-blank shots, the continued firing at Omari’s back until the gun was empty, and Mokin’s background as a former commando trained in weapons, and concluded that he had acted with clear intent to kill.
In the appeal, prosecutors Mohamad Sarahna and Tamar Bornstein argue that the district court wrongly broke the incident into separate segments instead of viewing it as a single continuous event. They argue that both the 20-to-25-year sentencing range and the 22-year sentence are far too lenient and fail to reflect Mokin’s dangerousness or the value of human life.
The prosecution also says the court gave too much weight to Mokin’s personal circumstances and to the absence of advance planning. It notes that Mokin lied throughout the proceedings, showed no remorse, and committed a series of serious offenses.
