In 1985, a senior Israeli army general Yitzhak Mordechai was acquitted of charges related to the deaths of the captured hijackers.
[1] Later, it emerged that members of the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, had implicated the general, while concealing who gave the direct order that the prisoners be killed.
In 1986, the Attorney General of Israel, Yitzhak Zamir, was forced to resign after he refused to call off an investigation into the Shin Bet's role in the affair.
The hijackers, who were holding the bus passengers hostage, demanded the release of 500 Arab prisoners imprisoned in Israel and free passage to Egypt for themselves.
As negotiations proceeded Shin Bet operatives on the scene quickly concluded that the hijackers were behaving like amateurs, one later stating that 'it's a bit ridiculous to call this a hostage-bargaining terrorist attack,' and that the four did not pose a risk.
[12] After lengthy negotiations, at around 7:00 am of 13 April a team of Sayeret Matkal commandos led by Doron Kempel stormed the bus while shooting at the hijackers through the vehicle's windows.
"As a result, Yatom and several members of the Shin Bet took the men into a vehicle, and drove them to an isolated place, where the two were beaten to death with rocks and iron bars.
A few days later Hadashot published on its front page a photograph taken by Alex Levac, in which one of the hijackers was being held alive and fully conscious while taken off the bus.
In Damascus, Bassam Abu Sharif of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, claimed that his organisation was responsible for the attack.
In a lead story passed by the censor they quoted "authorized senior sources" as saying that there was no alternative to the establishment of a commission of inquiry into the deaths of the two hijackers.
This punishment, which had not been applied to a Jewish publication for over fifteen years, was due to their reporting that Minister of Defence Arens had set up a committee of inquiry, headed by Reserve General Meir Zorea.
At the same time Hadashot refuted Moshe Arens' statement that he had not been at the scene of the hijacking by claiming that their photographer had been standing beside him shortly before he took the picture of Majdi Abu Jammaa.
Concerns were also being raised about a television interview that Arens had given shortly after the event when he said: "Whoever plans terrorist acts in Israel must know that he will not get out alive."
"[30] In 1985 Brigadier General Yitzhak Mordechai, who had led the storming of the bus, and eleven others were put on trial for the killing of the two prisoners.
In the spring of 1986 the deputy chief of Shin Bet, Reuven Hazak and two officials Rafi Malka and Peleg Raday, met Prime Minister Shimon Peres and accused their superior, Avraham Shalom, of having ordered the murders and coordinating the testimonies of witnesses in the case against General Mordechai.
They then gave evidence that led Attorney General Yitzhak Zamir to launch a criminal probe against the senior Shin Bet officials accused of covering up the killings.
It became public that Avraham Shalom was accused of ordering the killing of the two prisoners and organising an extensive cover-up which included implicating General Mordechai.
[32][33] In June 1986 a little-known judge, Yosef Harish, took over as Attorney General and President Chaim Herzog issued a blanket pardon to Shalom and four other Shin Bet officers.
[43] In 2011 Gidi Weitz directed Alef Techasel Otam, a documentary movie about the affair which aired to strong review and much public interest on Channel 10.