SANAA: A court in northwestern Yemen yesterday convicted a former air force pilot of shooting to death a Jewish man, but said he was “mentally unstable” when he committed the crime.

The court also fined the convict 5.5 million Yemeni riyals ($27,000) in blood money.

Abdul Aziz Al-Abdi, 40, has confessed to the killing of Moshe Al-Nahari, a member of the Jewish minority in the northeastern town of Raydah in Amran province last December.

The victim’s family said they would appeal the verdict as they have been expecting a death sentence to be handed on Al-Abdi.

“We will appeal the ruling. Even if you give me the whole Sanaa (the capital city) in blood money, I would not accept,” Moshe’s father, Yaish Al-Nahari, told the judge who pronounced the verdict.

Yaish said his son was in the company of four men — all Muslims — when he was shot and had clearly been targeted.

Prosecutors have asked the court to sentence the defendant to death, but the court said medical tests concluded that he was “mentally unstable” and sent him to a psychiatric institution.

As the court session got under way yesterday, the authorities sealed off the court building for fear of a violent backlash. When the verdict was read out, the dozen people present inside the small courtroom expressed relief, except for the victim’s widow and father.

Police hurried to empty the courtroom as soon as the trial ended and prevented journalists from speaking to people present.

Al-Nahari taught Hebrew in one of Raydah’s two Jewish schools. His murder triggered anger among Yemen’s Jewish minority, estimated to number around 400 people. About 50,000 have moved to Israel in an airlift that began in 1949.

Meanwhile, a court yesterday condemned a Pakistani man to death for drug trafficking and imposed a 25-year prison sentence on 14 others from the same country who were involved the case.

International coalition forces arrested the group last April in possession of 10,000 kilograms of hashish aboard a boat in Yemeni territorial waters near the southern port of Mukalla. They handed them in to the Yemeni authorities, who brought the men to trial in October.

In November, a Yemeni court sentenced an Iranian to death and ordered a 25-year prison sentence for 11 Iranians and Pakistanis after they were convicted of smuggling drugs into Yemeni territorial waters.