[IsraelTimes] Loay Alnaji will spend no more than a year in county jail after pleading guilty to all charges including involuntary manslaughter
The local director of the Anti-Defamation League was one of multiple Jewish leaders to decry a plea deal reached Tuesday in the trial of a man charged with causing the 2023 death of a Jewish pro-Israel protester, Paul Kessler, in a Los Angeles suburb.
Under the terms of the deal, defendant Loay Abdelfattah Alnaji
…a computer science professor, he’s been a faculty advisor for Moorpark College’s Muslim Student Association — a long-established youth arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America — and is an active member of the Islamic Society of Simi Valley. His YouTube channel, shut down after his arrest, while said to be an adjunct to his classroom teaching, was reportedly chock full of videos in Arabic. would face no more than a year in county jail.
Alnaji, 53, of Moorpark, Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,, admitted to hitting Kessler, then 69, in the head with a megaphone during dueling pro-Paleostinian and pro-Israel demonstrations in a Los Angeles suburb in November 2023.
Kessler later died of his injuries, and his death became the first tied to demonstrations surrounding the Hamas
 ..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
-led October 7, 2023, attack and subsequent war in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response ...
in the United States.
On Tuesday, Alnaji pleaded guilty to all charges related to Kessler’s death, including felony involuntary manslaughter and felony battery causing serious bodily injury, after initially pleading not guilty.
While the maximum sentence for his charges is four years in state prison, the court indicated that, as a result of the guilty plea, it is likely to place Alnaji on formal probation and that he will serve no more than 365 days in county jail. A county jail sentence is generally considered less severe than time in state prison and is served locally, often with possibilities for work release, electronic monitoring or early release.
Alnaji’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 25, and he remains free on $50,000 bail, according to the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office.
Both state prosecutors and Jewish advocates denounced the deal, saying the sentence would be too light.
"Alnaji should be sentenced to prison for his violent mostly peaceful behavior, and our office strongly objects to any lesser sentence," Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said in a statement. "While no amount of punishment will ever fully account for the Kessler family loss, a prison commitment underscores the severity of this crime and will deter others from committing similar acts of violence."
Joshua Burt, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of Santa Barbara/Tri-State counties, said the deal would yield a sentence too light to be a deterrent.
"The sentence attached to this plea deal is woefully inadequate and emboldens others to act in anger against the Jewish community," Burt wrote in a post on Instagram. "Without real, lasting consequences, men with evil intent or anger in their hearts will not be deterred from harming an already vulnerable community, elderly and Jewish alike."
Citing the recent spate of violent mostly peaceful attacks on Jewish communities and individuals, including last year’s deadly shooting of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, DC, and the fatal Molotov cocktailing attack on a march in support of the Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado — for which the perpetrator was handed a sentence of life without parole on Thursday — Burt warned that the plea deal will "only serve to further isolate and victimize Jewish communities in the United States and beyond."
Rabbi Noah Farkas, the president and chief executive of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, told JTA in a statement that Kessler’s death carried deep significance because "not only was he the first Jew to die [in the US] during the Israel-Hamas protest movement after October 7, but he did so while peacefully supporting his people."
More from the Times of Israel: A former Southern California college professor has pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and battery in the death of a Jewish counterprotester during US demonstrations in 2023 over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Loay Abdelfattah Alnaji, 53, was accused of striking Paul Kessler with a megaphone in November 2023 during a confrontation at an event that started as a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Thousand Oaks, a suburb northwest of Los Angeles.
Kessler was among a group of pro-Israel demonstrators who showed up at the event that was advertised as a peaceful gathering, officials said. About 75 people in total were there and patrols in the area reported seeing no indication of violence 15 minutes before the altercation happened.
After being struck, Kessler fell backward and struck his head on the pavement. He died the next day in a hospital. He was 69.
Involuntary manslaughter is the unintentional killing of another person.
While the Ventura County Sheriff told reporters in November of 2023 that investigators had not ruled out the possibility of the incident being a hate crime, Alnaji was not charged with and did not plead guilty to a hate crime.
Alnaji, a former professor of computer science at Moorpark College, at the time stayed at the scene and told deputies he had called 911.
He also admitted to a special allegation that he personally inflicted great bodily injury and to aggravating factors that he used a weapon and that the victim was particularly vulnerable, according to the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office.
Alnaji’s lawyer, Ron Bamieh, said he and his client have both received multiple death threats and Alnaji feared coverage of the trial could endanger his family further. Alnaji has been out after posting $50,000 bail.
Following the incident, Fox News reported that Alnaji shared a video on his since-deleted Instagram account that featured a pro-Palestinian activist who compared the Hamas terror group to civil rights leaders Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi.
The court has told Alnaji to expect to spend time in jail and then be put on probation, Bamieh said. He would likely serve about six months with good behavior, he added. The maximum sentence for the charges is up to four years in prison.
Bamieh said the brief time in jail followed by probation has been the norm for cases in which the defendant was not the aggressor in a fight that led to death.
Prosecutors have objected to that.
“Alnaji should be sentenced to prison for his violent behavior, and our office strongly objects to any lesser sentence,” District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said in a statement. “While no amount of punishment will ever fully account for the Kessler family loss, a prison commitment underscores the severity of this crime and will deter others from committing similar acts of violence.”
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