This week, five months after three members of the Dawabsheh family were murdered in an arson attack in the Palestinian West Bank village of Douma, indictments were served on two suspected perpetrators.

Twenty-year-old Amiram Ben Uliel was accused on Sunday of having thrown a Molotov cocktail into the Dawabsheh home on July 31. A minor, whose name is subject to a gag-order, has been accused of assisting him - but not of joining in with the attack.

The two were among a group of young settler suspects who have been under arrest for six weeks.

Shin Bet investigators were allowed to use "special" types of physical coercion on the suspects which, according to their lawyers and Israeli human-rights groups, amounted to torture.

While the alleged motive of the Douma attack was revenge for the killing of a Jewish settler by Palestinian terrorists, the Shin Bet maintains that the group's core objective is to foment violence between Israelis and Palestinians and bring about the collapse of the Israeli state, to be replaced by a Jewish kingdom.

One major obstacle still remaining in the legal proceedings is the challenge the suspects' lawyers plan to mount against the admissibility of their confessions. The Israeli legal system allows investigators to use "special measures" for preventative reasons - but the judges may rule against their use in this case.