The commander of the Lachish Police Division, Lior Zohar, testified that on the evening of 28 February 2018, he came to the Sderot police station to update the investigators on the investigative actions that had been carried out in the case, and realized that defendant 1 had been interrogated first, gave the name of defendant 2 as his alibi for the day of the incident, and linked the two of them to a drug deal with the deceased. At the time of his arrival, Defendant 2 was under interrogation and when the interrogator Benita left, he informed him that he had interrogated Defendant 2 regarding the drug deal, that he was impressed by many contradictions in his words and that something did not seem good to him. At the end of the interrogation, Defendant 2 sat in the interrogation room with Interrogator Malichi, who asked him to join him, and from the moment he entered the room, a recording was played. According to him, he noticed that Defendant 2 was crying and in a bad mental state, he explained to him that the drug case did not interest him and Defendant 2 immediately said that he knew what interested him, said that he feared for his life and asked him to promise to help him and protect him; He asked defendant 2 if he had murdered the deceased and when he answered in the negative, he told him that if he was not the murderer and he was really not involved but only got involved in the incident, he would do everything in his power to help him in the future. At this point, defendant 2 began to tell about the events of that night, when from time to time he asked them to defend him, and he himself explained to him again that he had to tell the truth and as long as he told the truth and that he was not involved in the murder, he would do everything to help him (pp. 27-29, 32).
According to him, at the end of the interrogation, when it was already clear that Defendant 2 was involved in the incident, he stopped the interrogation, told Defendant 2 that he had to give testimony and told Investigator Malichi, "He becomes a suspect, interrogate him under a warning and take testimony from him" (p. 29). When asked why he did not see fit to stop the interrogation in order to warn Defendant 2 on suspicion of murder, he replied, "I entered into this questioning ostensibly with a person who is normative, that something here is not understood, there is a story here that is not understood. There is no suspicion against him here. There was some kind of drug story here. There were a lot of contradictions and things that needed to be investigated, but it wasn't an investigation, at that point he wasn't a suspect... He is not a suspect in the murder as far as I am concerned"; He explained that at first defendant 2 presented himself as someone who had found himself in a situation, that defendant 1 had done everything and surprised him, but when he told him that they had gone to buy fuel and went to burn the car, he stopped the questioning and instructed Investigator Malichi to interrogate him under a warning (pp. 32-33).