Moreover, after the defendant's arrest, a jacket and backpack with unique characteristics consistent with the documentation in the security camera video were seized in the seat, while remnants of gasoline were found in the backpack. In the defendant's room in the sitting, a basket with beer bottles with pieces of cloth inside them was also seized (below, paragraphs 56-59). The seizure of these items, the correspondence between them and the documentation in the security camera video and findings at the various scenes, as well as the identification of gasoline residues in the backpack, link the defendant to the commission of the acts and also serve as a reinforcement for the identification of the defendant by the various witnesses. Therefore, it is appropriate to give weight to the identification of the defendant by Uriel, Idan and Rinat in their police interrogations, although this weight is limited.
Items seized while sitting
- After the defendant's arrest, a jacket, a backpack and a basket with beer bottles containing pieces of cloth were seized in the meeting, the characteristics of which I will elaborate on as follows.
During his interrogation with the police on 7 November 2023, after watching videos of Sheikh Jarrah, the Postal Service, and Bank Leumi, Uriel, the defendant's roommate, identified that the man documented in these videos was carrying a backpack that he said belonged to him, and that was usually in the defendant's common room. Uriel described the backpack as a fake Adidas bag. He claimed that he found the backpack on a table on the roof of the yeshiva a week or two before he was interrogated by the police, and that when he located the backpack, it smelled strongly of gasoline. Uriel washed the bag and put it on the air conditioner outside the room, but the bag disappeared again (P/51A, p. 19, lines 476-477, p. 20, lines 479 ff., p. 21, lines 503 onwards).
- On November 8, 2023, the day after Uriel's first police interrogation, Uriel located the backpack in question, and the file was seized by the police. In Uriel's second interrogation with the police on November 9, 2023, Uriel described that the backpack was located in the bathroom window on the floor where Uriel lived in the yeshiva (P/51A, p. 2, lines 27 ff.; p. 3, lines 49-55).
In his testimony in court, Uriel also confirmed that the file documented in the videos is indeed a file that belongs to him, and in his words: "This file is mine, I don't know, I remember that this file is mine" (p. 64 of the minutes of the hearing of December 22, 2024, lines 20-21). Uriel described how he located the backpack on the roof of the yeshiva with the smell of gasoline wafting from it, how he washed the bag, and then the bag disappeared again and he was located again in the bathroom window of the yeshiva (p. 65 of the minutes of the hearing of December 22, 2024, lines 6, 9, 11, 15; p. 66, lines 1-2, 15-16). I will mention that in his testimony in court, Uriel retracted his identification of the defendant. Moreover, and as I will detail below (in paragraph 63), Uriel also retracted in his testimony in court the identification of the jacket worn by the man that was recorded in the security camera footage. Uriel's persistence in the statement that the backpack documented in the security camera footage is indeed a tie - strengthens the impression that the identification of the bag is authentic and reliable.
- The backpack found by the police, according to Uriel's direction, is a black backpack, with two reflective white zippers on the front of the backpack and the bottom of the front of the backpack with the inscription "adidas" written in white. When it was located, a strong smell of gasoline emanated from the file (Memorandum - P/36; photographs attached to the defendant's statement of November 13, 2023 - P/41; supplementary form to exhibits P/44). In a laboratory examination, remnants of gasoline were found in the bag (opinion by Dr. Dan Miller of the Forensic Identification Division dated November 12, 2023 - P/76, at p. 2).
The exterior features of the backpack - its dark color, the two white zippers at the top of the front of the bag and the white inscription on the bottom of the bag - match the documentation of the backpack in the security camera footage. I will also mention that, like Uriel, Shimon also identified the backpack in the video of Sikh Jarrah as a bag that he and the defendant carried alternately on their way to the Western Wall (although the identification was uncertain, P/67A, p. 15, line 362; and P/69A, p. 25, lines 653-654).
- The correspondence between the striking characteristics of Uriel's backpack that was located at the meeting and the backpack that was documented in the security camera footage, as well as the location of the gasoline residue in this bag, leads to the conclusion that this is indeed the backpack documented in the security camera footage, and that it was used to carry Molotov cocktails. The fact that the backpack was located at the meeting, and that, according to Uriel's testimony, it was a file that was owned by the defendant's roommate in the meeting - links the defendant to the commission of the act, and strengthens the conclusion that the defendant is the one documented in the security camera footage in each of the incidents.
- In addition, on 8 November 2023, a black jacket with a hoodie was seized in the room of the defendant and Uriel in the sitting, with a kind of V-shaped across the chest in front of it (supplementary form to exhibits P/39, seizure report and marking P/42, third photo).
In his first interrogation with the police on November 7, 2023, Uriel, the defendant's roommate, identified that the man documented in the security camera footage was wearing a jacket with a hoodie he owned, which was seized by the police while searching Uriel's room and the defendant's room in the yeshiva after the defendant's arrest, and in his words: "This hoodie is mine in general... I didn't understand where the hoodie had disappeared and apparently it had something to do with it... It's mine, this jacket" (P/50, p. 11, lines 259, 265, 269).