The assassin of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin today won the right to artificially inseminate his wife.
The Justice Ministry said it decided to allow the procedure after Jewish ultranationalist Yigal Amir, denied conjugal visits on the grounds that he could use them to pass political messages to his supporters on the outside, appealed to the Supreme Court.
Amir is serving a life prison sentence in solitary confinement. Asked how Amir responded to the ministry's decision, his lawyer told Israel Radio: "He sounded quite pleased, but can't say I heard any shouting for joy."
Amir shot Rabin at a 1995 peace rally in a bid to derail peace talks with the Palestinians; many Israelis had considered an assassination inconceivable despite political in-fighting at the time.
Amir then created a new national stir by marrying Larissa Trimbobler in a secret 2004 proxy ceremony.
Israelis across the political spectrum said Amir should not be "rewarded" for his unprecedented crime by consummating the union or raising a family.
But civil liberties experts have sided with Amir, noting that marriage and child-rearing is a basic right enjoyed by other convicted murderers in Israel, including Arabs jailed for political violence.
An immigrant from the former Soviet Union and a divorced mother of four, Ms Trimbobler corresponded with Amir and visited him under guard in an isolation block where the former law student is serving a life term with no chance of parole.
Rabbis declared the couple to have married under Jewish ritual law after Amir smuggled out a ring to Ms
Trimbobler using intermediaries.
"We realised that really there was nothing to stop Amir eventually getting a semen sample out to her as well," a Justice Ministry source said.