Additional Defense Witnesses
In addition to the defendant, the defense chose to summon only four witnesses to testify: Shakir, the defendant's father, Udai and Abed, the cousins who were arrested with him on 29 August 2022, and his uncle Ahmad Musrati. Ahmad's testimony has already been discussed above, in the chapter dealing with the screenshot with the details of the Mitsubishi, and therefore the reference to his words will now be limited. I will mention that Ahmad is not attributed involvement in the murder or the events of the day of his arrest, and his part in the affair is limited to bringing the stolen Mitsubishi into Israel, together with his nephew, on July 8, 2022. In his testimony in court, Ahmad sought to convince him that the defendant had no connection to Mitsubishi, and that his involvement in locating the details of the counterfeit license plate was accidental and marginal. This issue has already been discussed at length, as noted, and the considerable discrepancies between the defendant's version and Ahmad's version on these issues have been emphasized and have led to negative determinations regarding their reliability.
Moreover, already at the stage of the police investigation, two statements were taken from Ahmad, on 19 September 2022 and 28 September 2022, in which the witness emphasized his serious health condition and claimed that he could hardly see that he did not leave the house, because he was not with Muhammad al-Khatib in the Occupied Territories and did not bring a stolen vehicle with him [P/180 and P/181]. In court, he admitted that he had lied in his statements and that in fact he had indeed brought the stolen Mitsubishi into Israeli territory. His cross-examination revealed that he did not in fact have direct information about the fate of the Mitsubishi after it entered Israel, and only heard from Muhammad al-Khatib that the car was in his possession. Muhammad, as noted, was not brought to testify. I will conclude by saying that this is someone who testifies that he lied when he was interrogated by the police, and someone who gave a suppressed, contradictory and evolving version of the screenshot with the details of the Mitsubishi. Therefore, this is a manifestly unreliable witness whose testimony no evidentiary findings can be based.