Serious Crimes Case (Beer Sheva) 63357-03-18 State of Israel – F.M.D. V. Assaf Masoud Suissa - part 180

Defendant 2 also had difficulty clarifying when they understood that the deceased was dead, even though according to his suppressed version he insisted, like defendant 1, that the deceased died when the car was set on fire.  Thus, he claimed in his main testimony that when they returned from the gas station to the deceased's car, they hoped that the deceased had woken up, but when they opened the door he simply fell and they realized that he was dead; To the question of when they realized he was dead, he replied that already after they put him in the car and saw that he was unresponsive, they began to fear that he was dead. But in the same breath, he answered the question of whether they had gone to get the fuel when they were not yet sure that he was dead, because even then they thought he was dead (pp. 459-460).  In his cross-examination, he claimed that at first the deceased was put in the car thinking that he might wake up, but when they saw the amount of blood in the car, they realized that "there is a good chance that he was dead" (p. 483, paras. 25-29).  When asked why the deceased was not left at the place where he fell so that he might recover, and instead they tried to drag him a significant distance to the car, only to burn him afterwards, he first repeated his answer that they wanted to move him out of the rain and put him in a warm place in the hope that he would wake up.  When asked how the desire for the deceased to wake up was consistent with the fact that they decided to set fire to the car while he was inside, he replied that based on the amount of blood that was in the place, he was afraid that the deceased was already dead, and therefore "we understood, I understood, I was afraid that...  I was 90 percent sure that the person was dead"; when he was told that, according to him, there was a 10 percent chance that the deceased was alive, he said again, "I was almost sure he was dead," and then said that he was under pressure and could not think logically (pp. 486-488).