Tel Aviv  - Israel moved Yigal Amir, the assassin of former Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin, to another prison early Friday and revoked his privileges after unauthorized interviews he gave to the country's two main commercial television channels caused a public outcry.

Amir, 38, was moved from the Ayalon prison, north-east of Tel Aviv and near his family's residence, to the more remote Eshel prison, near Beersheba in southern Israel.

He also had his telephone and television privileges revoked, as well as his conjugal visits with his wife, Larissa Trimbobler, and his family visitations, for at least three months, Israeli media reported. He will also be held in solitary confinement.

Israel's Channel 10 and Channel 2 broadcast excerpts of interviews they conducted with Amir during their main news broadcast Thursday night. They announced they would broadcast their full interviews at prime-time on Friday.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak was one of several who expressed outrage at the channels for giving Amir, a radical Jew who assassinated Rabin in 1995 for his peace moves with the Palestinians, a platform to express his extremist views.

"Yigal Amir deserves to rot in prison until the end of his days and must not be allowed to join the public-media debate in any way," Barak said.

Channel 2 subsequently announced Friday morning that it would not air the full interview. Channel 10 was deliberating whether to air its own interview or to cancel as well.

Both commercial channels are in tough competition with each other over viewer ratings. Their main evening news broadcasts are interrupted several times for commercial breaks.

In the excerpts broadcast Thursday evening on Channel 10, Amir said he had had an earlier opportunity to assassinate Rabin some time after the launch of the 1993 Oslo peace process, but did not go ahead with it, "because it wasn't time yet."

Amir attended the wedding of the daughter of one of Israel's chief rabbis, to which Rabin was also invited.

Rabin, Amir said, was "sitting there at a table with only one bodyguard. I could have easily shot him if I wanted to. ... I was right next to him, two metres. I was walking around there and I was inside with a gun."

He added that "I saw that it was so simple. I told myself: 'In a few years you'll be sorry you didn't do it.'"

When asked, Amir said he was influenced to carry out the murder by "all those who understand the military, who said that it will bring a catastrophe, this (Oslo) agreement. Among them, he named former premier Ariel Sharon. Amir also stated he did not need a rabbi's directive to a carry out the assassination.

Before airing the excerpts, Channel 10 justified holding the interview, because "also the version of a murderer is important to hear for our society, to know what why he did it, what motivated him."

Amir, sentenced to life in prison without parole for the political murder, is allowed to make phone calls to five different numbers of family members.

Channel 10 held the unauthorized interview with him by having the assassin call his wife. Its correspondent then conducted the interview via her telephone.

It said it had held a series of conversations with him over the past weeks, ahead of the 13th anniversary since Amir shot Rabin from close range as the premier was leaving a peace rally in central Tel Aviv on November 4, 1995.

Amir married Trimbobler, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union also with radical views, who has four children from a previous marriage, in August 2004.

They met when she visited him in prison for "humanitarian" reasons. The pair petitioned to court to be allowed conjugal visits and have a mutual son born in October 2007, whose circumcision ceremony was held in the prison courtyard. (dpa)