The investigation team was therefore able to penetrate the WhatsApp correspondence and review them, but the sophisticated technological solution found to bypass the lock did not reveal the identity of the person whose fingerprint was used to lock access to the WhatsApp application. Common sense leads, of course, to the assumption that this is the fingerprint of the owner of the device, or at least of the owner of it, who was, in this case, the defendant, since the phone was seized in his possession on August 29, 2022, and the evidence collected testifies, when today there is no longer any dispute that the device was used by him and was held by him in the weeks preceding the day of the murder. Against this background, the defendant was interrogated about this issue, as well as its significance in relation to his correspondence with Wasfi on the day of the murder, as part of his last police interrogation on October 6, 2022.
During that interrogation, the interrogators surprised the defendant and opened the Samsung A32 (omitted) in front of his eyes..., and at a certain point they explained to the defendant that WhatsApp was locked by TA and asked him to put his finger on the screen in order to check if his fingerprint opened the app. The defendant refused, and repeatedly refused, every time he was asked to perform this action [P/164 at pp. 38-41]. Immediately afterwards, the defendant was asked about the correspondence with Wasfi, and claimed that he did not remember who it was, even after he was shown a picture of Wasfi, despite the fact that today there is no dispute that he is a person who has known him well for many years. In any event, the defendant was explicitly asked about the correspondence with Waspi from the day of the murder, and again claimed that he did not remember the person and the correspondence, and again refused the interrogators' request to put his finger on the screen in order to negate or substantiate the assumption that it was his fingerprint that opened the application [ibid., at pp. 42-49].