In his testimony [transcript of June 4, 2024, pp. 256-259], Investigator Ibrahim described the manner in which the viewing report was prepared. According to him, he received the files, which contained footage from a large number of cameras, on a hard drive from investigator Sagi Abramov, and for several days he watched, and re-watched, the videos of the various cameras. After watching all the videos, he chose the Rema Square as an anchor point, and as part of the viewing report, he made sure to document still images of the vehicles each time they were re-identified by one of the cameras. Regarding the loss of the videos themselves, Ibrahim clarified that usually [and indeed in relation to the many videos seized during the interrogation - H.T.] the files are uploaded to the police backup server, and the viewing is done on the server, but in this case the viewing was done directly from the hard drive itself, and for some reason the files were not ultimately uploaded to the server.
In the course of his cross-examination [ibid., pp. 260-271], the witness further stated that during the preparation of the report he went on a budget vacation, and stayed for four days in Eilat. He took the hard drive with him to Eilat, worked on the report from there as well, and kept the drive in a safe in his hotel room. As for the fate of the drive and the files on it at the end of the report, the witness was unable to provide any reliable information. According to the procedures, the drive was supposed to be returned to the cabinet displayed in the unit, but the witness could not reconstruct, after two years, who returned the drive and whether it was indeed returned. In the meantime, the witness moved from the Central District Commander to the Northern District Command, and only in April 2024 did his son, Superintendent of Police, who is in charge of the investigation, contact him and ask him if he remembered what happened to the videos. Until that moment, the witness had no idea that the files had been lost. In his estimation, the drive was accidentally formatted, without the files having previously been uploaded to the backup server, and thus they were deleted and lost.