Rabin’s Killer, 2 Others Are Formally Charged : Israel: Gunman plotted with brother and friend but acted alone in the end, the indictment says.

At the end of the 30-day Jewish mourning period for slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Tuesday, Israeli prosecutors formally charged his confessed assassin, Yigal Amir, with premeditated murder.

Israel’s Justice Ministry announced that the 25-year-old Jewish law student, his brother Hagai and their friend Dror Adani also were charged with conspiracy to kill Rabin and attack Arabs, illegal arms possession, manufacturing arms and other crimes.

The charges were filed as political leaders, army officers and Rabin’s family visited his grave in Mount Herzl national cemetery for a final, emotion-filled farewell. “Yitzhak, you were murdered because you were right,” Prime Minister Shimon Peres said in his eulogy. “The bullets which tore through your chest did not kill the fruits of your labor. . . . The dawn of peace has broken and it shall never be eclipsed by anyone.”

Yigal Amir has said he killed Rabin in an effort to halt the turnover of West Bank land to Palestinian control under the 1993 agreement between Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Instead, the slaying has prompted Peres to pick up the pace of Israeli troop withdrawal from Arab cities and towns in the West Bank, which religious Jews such as Amir believe is holy land and call by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria.

The unrepentant Amir also has insisted that he acted alone in killing Rabin, and the indictment says that although Amir plotted the assassination with his brother and friend, in the end he did act alone on Nov. 4 in the fatal shooting after a Tel Aviv peace rally.

The three men allegedly had debated a variety of ways to kill Rabin, including setting off a car bomb, blowing up the Rabin apartment in Tel Aviv and firing an antitank rocket at the apartment, according to the charge sheet.

They also allegedly considered shooting Rabin during an interview, with a gun hidden in a microphone or tape recorder.

According to the charges, Amir told his brother on Nov. 4 that he intended to kill Rabin at the peace rally, but the 27-year-old Hagai did not think this would work.

“Hagai tried to dissuade the accused from carrying out this plan, arguing that due to the heavy security around the prime minister his chances of succeeding and staying alive would be slim, and that the way to go about executing this was to employ a sniper’s rifle equipped with a telescopic sight,” the Justice Ministry said in a summary of the charges.

But the brothers did not possess such a weapon at the time, prosecutors said, and Yigal Amir went ahead with his plan. Based on Amir’s own reenactment of the crime, the government describes in chilling detail how he arrived at Rabin’s side and pumped the prime minister with bullets from a 9-millimeter Beretta pistol.

According to the indictment, on Nov. 4 Amir loaded his Beretta with six regular bullets and six hollow-point bullets that had been given to him by Hagai Amir. He left home in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya at about 7:45 p.m. and boarded a city bus to the rally. Amir took off his Jewish skullcap, walked to the parking lot where Rabin’s car was parked and waited there for about 40 minutes for the rally to end.

Rabin walked off the stage at 9:45 p.m. and approached his car. Amir walked up and shot three times at nearly point-blank range, the indictment said. Two of the hollow-point bullets hit Rabin in the torso.

Amir, his brother and Adani are scheduled to appear in Tel Aviv District Court today to hear the charges against them.

Although Amir originally said no one could defend him better than he could defend himself, he apparently has agreed to be represented by defense attorney Jonathan Ray Goldenberg, a resident of Emmanuel, a West Bank settlement. Goldenberg said in a telephone interview that Amir’s family hired him and that Amir has asked for considerable control over his defense.

“It is his life, his future. As a lawyer, I can only suggest to him what approach to take. Ultimately, he is the owner of the house,” Goldenberg said.

Asked if he had any qualms about representing the confessed killer whose act has shaken the very foundation of Israeli society and identity, Goldenberg said: “Every Jew needs good representation in times of hardship. . . . This comes under the spirit of love of Israel.”

The lawyer said he had met several times with Amir already and found him to be “a sweet person, a sensitive person with a good heart who wishes to bring good to the world.” He said he found it difficult to reconcile the man he had met with the crime.

According to the indictment, Amir had tried to kill Rabin at three previous appearances this year:

* On Jan. 22, Amir waited for Rabin at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, but the prime minister canceled his appearance after Muslim militants set off a suicide bomb that day.

* On April 22, Rabin attended Passover celebrations, but security guards kept Amir from getting close.

* On Sept. 11, Rabin inaugurated a highway interchange, but again, security guards kept Amir away.

Prosecutors have asked that the Amir brothers and Adani be tried before a panel of three judges because of the severity of the charges. They said they have 43 witnesses for their case.

Altogether, police have arrested nine religious Jews in their 20s in connection with the assassination. The only other one to be charged so far is Sgt. Arik Schwartz, a soldier accused of giving army explosives to the Amirs for use in planned attacks on Palestinians.

The memorial service for Rabin took place under gray skies and drizzle. Leah Rabin, the prime minister’s widow, abandoned her black mourning clothes for more colorful dress at the end of the 30-day mourning period, but was tearful at the grave with her family.

Lt. Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Israel’s armed forces chief of staff, spoke of the “huge empty space” left by Rabin’s death. “Thirty days are not enough time to learn how to live with the pain,” he said.

Researcher Batsheva Sobelman of The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.