Deciding on the Admissibility of Utterances
After hearing the testimonies of the relevant witnesses and reviewing the entire investigation material in the case, including viewing the documentation of the defendants' interrogations, I am satisfied that the defendants' arguments regarding the inadmissibility of their statements should be rejected.
I will already note that I have found the testimonies of the investigators and police officers who testified on this matter to be reliable, authentic and orderly, they reconciled with each other, and mainly with the evidence material, and inter alia with the many statements of the defendants in the interrogations. On the other hand, as will be detailed below, the defendants' testimonies in court were clearly unreliable; And even with regard to the admissibility of the statements, their testimonies left a "processed" and unreliable impression, beyond being suppressed versions, which were first raised during their testimonies in court.
The Claim of Misrepresentation to the Defendants that This Is an Investigation of Drug Offenses
As stated, the investigators' testimonies were reliable to me, and I did not find any basis for the defense's claim that they concocted a sophisticated trick, according to which the case would be investigated at the Sderot station instead of the Lachish District Court, and the defendants would be interrogated on suspicion of committing drug offenses, all in order to present the defendants with a false representation as if it were a simple case, in order to lead them to waive their right to consult and the right to remain silent. In addition to the clear and reliable testimonies of the investigators, headed by Superintendent Michaeli, who was in charge of the investigation, according to which the case was initially investigated at the Sderot station for considerations of efficiency and convenience due to the proximity to the scene of the incident, and the suspicion that the defendants were connected to the murder was established only during the conversation between Defendant 2 and the commander of the Special Operations Unit; Thus, it can be clearly seen from the videos documenting the interrogation that the interrogations of the defendants, especially in the first days, were conducted in a proper, respectful and sensitive manner on the part of the interrogators, and that their rights and the suspicions against them were detailed to them during all the interrogations (not only at the beginning of the interrogations, but also during them, when suspicion of additional offenses arose).