Rabin's killer marries in secret

Amir and Trimbobler were refused permission to marry

An Israeli woman has secretly married Yigal Amir, the man who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, his family says.

The ceremony with Larisa Trimbobler was performed by a rabbi two weeks ago.

A ring and marriage contract were apparently obtained from Amir, as required by Jewish law, during a prison visit by his father.

A request by Amir to marry was rejected by the Israeli prison authorities earlier this year.

Prison officials are investigating the claims of the secret wedding.

Religious experts say a Jewish wedding requires that the groom give the bride a marriage contract and a ring during the ceremony, but these can also be delivered by proxy or messenger.

Prisons Service spokesman Ofer Lefler said that Amir's father, Shlomo, may have drafted a marriage contract with his son during a visit to Ayalon Prison and taken the document to the wedding ceremony.

The authorities are also investigating how the ring required for the ceremony was taken out of the prison.

'Connection'

Ms Trimbobler, who has frequently visited Amir in prison, has said she wanted to marry him for ideological reasons. She is a divorced mother of four.

"We felt our story was going on a long time," she told Israel's Yediot Ahronot newspaper.

"We conducted the ceremony out of a simple need to realise the connection between us by a measure which is permitted and which exists in religious law."

Amir, an ultranationalist Jew, said he killed Rabin to derail a land-for-peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

Amir, who is serving a life sentence for the killing, has never shown any remorse for his crime.

Prison authorities had refused Amir's request to marry on security grounds. Under Israeli law, all prisoners are allowed to wed and have children.