Searching for information about the murder shortly after it was committed
In an intrusion into one of the defendant's phones, a Samsung Galaxy 21S device carrying a 337 subscription, documentation of 53 Internet searches for information relating to the murder was found on the day of the murder itself, August 26, 2022, between 15:40 and 16:10, i.e., only about three hours after the murder. An examination of the penetration output shows that the search terms used changed from time to time, and included the following expressions: "murder in Lod today", "murder in broad daylight in Lod", "Marwan Alhuah murdered in Lod", "Marwan and Hawah murdered in Lod", "murder in Lod Aluhuah", "murder in Lod and Hoah" [P/145 - Aid Insights Report 1157/22 - output marked SA.3, and see also P/137 regarding the adjustment of the timetables to Israel time].
The number of searches and their intensity over such a short period of time, especially against the background of the proximity of the murder, aroused the curiosity of the investigators, and the defendant was asked to explain his connection to these searches, and the information he had that caused him to carry out those searches. When asked about this during the police interrogation stage, the defendant implicitly gave evasive answers, which today there is no dispute that these were blatant lies. Thus, the defendant claimed in his interrogation on 14 September 2022 that he first heard about the murder only when he was arrested by the police, i.e., 3 days after the day of the murder, and when he was asked about the searches that were conducted on his phone, he claimed that he did not remember the subscriber number and did not remember what led to the aforementioned searches [P/156 at pp. 31-33]. In the next interrogation, on 28 September 2022, he claimed that he did not know who the murder victim was and that he did not know him, and when asked about the anonymous search that was conducted on the phone, he did not give any substantive answer [P/161 at pp. 60-61].