Her testimony in court was heard at the hearing on 13 December 2022. In her main interrogation, she said that on the morning of the incident, she went ahead and reached Y.A.'s mother. from the back of the house, at around 9:00-8:30 A.M. She noticed two people on the roof (apparently M.A. and his son) and heard the sound of crying. Later, she heard Y.A. MDA and the police were called to the scene, and after she placed the bag inside the house (a fact she added during the interview with the State Attorney's Office, goes to testimony, and was documented in a memo), he ordered her to direct the rescue forces from the front road to the back of the house. When she turned there, she saw someone passing by with blood on his hands, which caused her to panic and think that it was a murder. He was young and "white," with short hair, and was wearing a black garment. In her cross-examination, she estimated that the distance between her and the bleeding young man was about 5 meters. She did not see him walking until he reached the ambulance, and she could not, according to her, identify him, not even through a photograph.
- The evidence brought in relation to the third and final time segment of the incident has a "retrospective", and even significant, effect in order to formulate insights into the defendant's involvement in the second - critical segment, and his role in harming the deceased. The sequence of events relating to him, from the moment he left the grandmother's house, was described in a similar manner, by the various witnesses, and a fairly clear factual picture emerges.
- The insights that emerge from this passage do not benefit the defendant's later and current version - which absolves him of any responsibility for the deceased's fatal injury and the consequences of the entire incident. We will discuss the main reasons for this:
- Berry, and the defendant did not claim otherwise, that the purpose of his hasty run towards the street was not to call forces to the scene, in order to try to save his stabbed cousin. In this alone, it is still impossible to rule out that his purpose was to escape the provocation of unknown "third parties". However, even in such a scenario, it is clear that he should have had an interest in calling for help to the wounded.
- There is no witness who saw or will mention in his testimony another person coming out from the direction of the grandmother's house, except for the defendant. The evidence indicates that the neighbor saw a figure, thin and injured, running up the street. Later she identified that it was an injured man who had been treated on the sidewalk, and hence, without a doubt, it was the defendant, who had moved away from the scene.
- If the deceased and the defendant were stabbed by an unknown stranger, and both were his victims, and even, if the deceased was the one who attacked and stabbed the defendant, due to an "old family dispute", as he told one of the policemen, he would have been expected to report immediately the need for help and treatment of the cousin, even if his injury was caused in self-defense. He did not report or mention, at any stage, the deceased's injury and the need to assist him.
- In his initials, and spontaneous versions, before he ceased to cooperate and answer questions, the defendant mentioned as the potential perpetrators of the incident - either himself alone ("I fell"), or the two - the deceased and the accused, even if he saw himself as having been attacked by his cousin. Admittedly, there is a momentary and puzzling passage from which he retracted the presence of "Dan-Dan" (Daniel Sarhersher - whose presence in the area was completely ruled out), however, when it comes to the presence of a stranger or strangers at the scene, and all the more so - the fact that he or she was responsible for the stabbings - there is no mention, even a hint. If so, in real time, the defendant also speaks only about him and the deceased as involved in the incident.
- I will note, and remove any doubt, that I do not view the defendant's hasty departure from the scene as circumstantial evidence, or even real strengthening, in the context of determining his guilt. As a spontaneous-instinctive reaction, his flight from there can reasonably be explained, for reasons that are not incriminating. Certainly, if he was the victim of a brutal attack with a knife, by unknown strangers, or even by the deceased himself. It is understandable, if only because of his undisputed background and past, his subjective state of mind, which seeks to avoid being present - which would apparently lead to immediate arrest - in a bloody scene where a critically wounded person lies next to him. However - after the arrival of the troops - more than surprising is his refusal to call them to launch a manhunt for the two attackers - stabbers who roam freely, even if for his own reasons, he refrains from directing them at his seriously injured cousin.
- After the evidence, the questions, and the possible conclusions drawn from each of the three above time segments have been flooded, we will turn to examine the defendant's version.
The Defendant's Version
- The defendant, Maor Dadoun (H.1), was interrogated by the police, and seven statements were taken from him - one at the hospital and the rest at the offices of the Central Intelligence Unit. Except for his first interrogation, the defendant maintained his right to remain silent, did not answer questions asked, and did not cooperate with his interrogators. He chose to testify in his defense, and his testimony was heard in court at the sessions of 2 July 2023 and 11 July 2023.
- The defendant's interrogations at the police:
His first statement (P/1, transcript of P/1A, and audio CD P/1B) was taken shortly after the incident - 23 March 2021 at 10:45 A.M., at Soroka Hospital. During the meeting, the defendant gave three key details, which constitute his initial version. The first was given in response to the interrogator's question, what happened that day, when the defendant said: "Ben stabbed me, I don't know why he stabbed me, he attacked me and that's it." The second describes the defendant's actions in a situation in which, according to him, Ben was stabbed in the palms of his hands, when he said he was defending himself with his hands. The third was given in response to the investigator's question, who was in the house at the time of the incident, when his answer was that it was "Dan-Dan" (Daniel Sarahsher, the defendant's cousin and the deceased). At a certain point, the defendant said that he did not want to answer any further questions, and the interrogation was over. The height of the aforementioned statement, Sgt. Elad Karadi (A.T. 18), testified in court, at the hearing of December 12, 2022. He confirmed to the plaintiff that since he did not have a recording device, he recorded the events on his mobile phone, and sent the file via WhatsApp to the investigator of the Special Investigation Unit Danny Bokobza (A.T. 43). During the course of taking the same testimony from the defendant, the interrogator Yossi Salah (A.T.7) arrived at the scene, informed the defendant of his arrest and handcuffed him. In his cross-examination, and in the recurring one, he confirmed that the defendant had not warned him that he was a suspect, prior to the collection of the statement (a fact that was the basis of the defense's argument for the inadmissibility of evidence, as a result, already at the meeting of October 12, 2021), inter alia - because he did not know whether he was a victim or a suspect (p. 562, para. 5). He further said that the defendant was fully conscious, spoke, and was not on an "ambo" ventilator (contrary to the defense attorney's claim). Shortly thereafter, at 12:00 P.M., the defendant was arrested by Superintendent Tamir Abtabi (P.A. 42), in accordance with the "Reference to the Imprisonment of an Adult - Officer-in-Charge Report" (P/93B-D). A memorandum prepared by the same interrogator (P/93A) shows that during the interview with him, he asked the defendant if he had any health problems or a psychiatric background, and the aforementioned maintained his right to remain silent, and did not reply to him, except for a vote of his own opinion and a nod of his head. His second statement (Exhibit 2, transcript of Exhibit 2A, and CD Exhibit 2B) was taken a few hours later, 23 March 2021 at 16:15, by Investigator Elad Avraham, together with Investigator Eyal Saban. At the beginning of his interrogation, when he was dressed in hospital clothes and wearing his fingers, the defendant announced that he wished to maintain his right to remain silent, refused to consult with an attorney on behalf of the Attorney General's Office, and placed his head on the table, in such a way that he covered his face with his hands and did not look in the direction of the interrogators when they spoke to him. At a certain point, the defendant straightened his back to a sitting position, and lowered his gaze toward the floor, until the interrogation was completed. During this process, the defendant was asked about the violent incident, at the end of which the deceased was found dead and he himself was injured in his hands. He was also asked whether there was a connection between the aforementioned incident and the defendant's stabbing of the deceased's father in 2016, where the murder weapon was found, what clothes he was wearing, and where the grandmother and cousin Mor were at the time of the incident. His third statement (Exhibit 3, transcript of Exhibit 3A, CD P/3B) was given two days later, 25 March 2021 at 12:38 p.m., by Investigator Elad Avraham. At the beginning of the interrogation, too, the defendant announced that he was maintaining his right to remain silent, did not cooperate with his interrogator, and refused to consult with an attorney. For most of the interrogation, he sat upright in front of the interrogator, with his eyes closed at times. He was asked about the details of the incident, his mental state, and possible motive, as well as the possibility that someone else had hurt him and the deceased. His fourth statement (Exhibit 4, transcript of Exhibit 4A, disc P/4B) was given on 30 March 2021 at 13:21, by Investigator Eyal Zeitoun. Before the interrogation began, the interrogator put a defense attorney on the telephone line, on the loudspeaker, and the defendant told him that he was not interested in legal advice. He did not cooperate in this interrogation either, which he also began with a statement, that he was maintaining his right to remain silent. Investigator Elad Avraham was also present during the interrogation, and for a large part of the interrogation the defendant sat hunched over, with his head bowed and his eyes not meeting those of the interrogators. He did not respond, when evidence related to eyewitnesses and the presence of security cameras near the scene were hurled at him, and he remained indifferent, even when asked whether he was called a "murderer" and whether there was a connection to the stabbing of my late father, three and a half years earlier. In conclusion, he was asked about details unrelated to the interrogation, and like the previous questions, he did not answer them. His fifth statement (P/5, transcript P/5A, CD P/5B) was given on April 1, 2021 at 12:42, by interrogator Eyal Zeitoun. We would like to note that in the context of this interrogation, a memorandum was submitted by Sgt. Yochai Triki (C.A. 39, P/84), according to which, on the way from the detention center to the interrogation at the offices of the Central Intelligence Unit (below), he asked the defendant (who was at the time in suspicious status) if he was interested in consulting a defense attorney, or if he would like a psychiatric examination, and he answered in the negative, to both questions. Sgt. Triki was questioned about the content of the memo at the meeting of May 1, 2023, and reiterated its main points. We will return to the interrogation itself. On this occasion as well, and at the beginning of the interrogation, the interrogator put a defense attorney on the phone line, and the defendant insisted that he did not want legal advice. During the interrogation, the defendant bowed his head and did not look in the interrogator's direction at all, even when he was shown the security video in which he was seen arriving at the grandmother's house, and various versions were hurled at him that were taken from the grandmother, his mother, his cousin Mor (who also lived in the grandmother's house), and the neighbor H.Z. When he was slammed in the face by the person accused of murdering the deceased, on the birthday of his late uncle Shlomo, and before fleeing the scene he "pushed" the knife with which he murdered into the hands of the deceased - the defendant moved his chair 90 degrees, so that his face would not be in front of the interrogator, looked at the wall, and sometimes even closed his eyes. His sixth statement (P/6, the transcript of the confrontation that followed the interrogation between the defendant and his cousin Daniel Sharasher P/6A, and a CD documenting the aforementioned confrontation P/6B) was given on April 11, 2021, at 12:27 p.m., by interrogator Eyal Zeitoun, in the presence of interrogator Elad Avraham. At the beginning of the interrogation, the interrogator called an attorney from the Attorney General's Office, and the defendant refused to consult him and asked to maintain his right to remain silent. During the interrogation as well, he bowed his head and did not make eye contact with his interrogators. He did not respond, when asked to describe where he had come from to his grandmother's house, and even when he was shown a video of the security cameras, in which he was seen meeting his grandmother as she left the house, and her version was shown to him, he did not look at the screen and remained silent. He continued to do so, even when he was slammed in the face, that his cousin Mor recognized him in the video, and that the neighbor H.Z. saw him running from the direction of the scene, with his hands bleeding. The lack of response on his part, while bowing his head toward the floor, continued even when he was asked why he claimed to the rescue forces that the deceased had attacked him, and later that it was his cousin Daniel Sarahsher. A picture of a knife, covered in blood, was also shown to him, and he chose to close his eyes and ignore the sights - when asked whether he had used it and stabbed the deceased many times with it. The defendant was also presented with the findings of a hearing by the Institute of Forensic Medicine (hereinafter) - according to which the blood sampled from the blade of the knife, the handle and the shoes found at the scene was a mixture of his blood and the blood of the deceased. His silence remained the same even when M.A. (the technician who worked on the roof next door) was slammed and flattened in his face, in detail, and even when it became clear to him that there was evidence that he had been seen stabbing the deceased and fled the scene. When the interrogator asked whether there were other people at the scene, besides him and the deceased, the defendant continued to remain silent. The interrogator turned to review the main points of T.Z.'s version. (the caregiver who worked at Y.A.'s mother's house), and asked for the defendant's response, who remained silent. Even when the neighbor's version of Y.A. was presented to him. In detail, including the playing of excerpts from the reenactment and his conversation with MDA, during which he called the defendant's name several times, and reported stabbing, the defendant did not respond, and continued his silence. At the end of the interrogation and subsequent to it, a confrontation took place between the defendant and his cousin Daniel Sarhersher, at 3:07 P.M. (P/6A). During the confrontation, the defendant was asked why he had told the interrogator, in his first statement, that Daniel Sarhasher was at the scene and had hurt him. The defendant did not answer, as did the rest of the interrogations, and so did Daniel Sarhersher, he did not answer the questions addressed to him, except for the claim that he was at home at the time of the incident and not at the scene. His seventh statement (Exhibit 7, transcript of Exhibit 7A, CD P/7B) was given on 25 April 2021 at 09:04 a.m., by Investigator Elad Avraham. At the beginning of the interrogation, the interrogator called the attorney from the Attorney General and spoke with him over the loudspeaker, but the defendant replied that he did not wish to consult with him. During the entire interrogation, the defendant bowed his head, looked toward the floor, and maintained his right to remain silent. He did not react at any stage, even when he was presented with the main evidence against him, including the findings of the autopsy of the deceased's body, and did not agree to look at the video that was shown to him, in which he was seen meeting his grandmother and staying in the vicinity of her home, on the morning of the incident, from 08:44 (real time) until about 09:14. The defendant's indifference and lack of response remained the same, even when presenting the main points of the experience, moving the place of the medical hearing and detailing the findings of the tests performed on the body of the deceased.
- The defendant's testimony in court:
As stated, the defendant chose to testify in his defense, and his testimony was given over two sessions. At the beginning of his main interrogation by the defense attorney (2 July 2023), he introduced the deceased as his cousin, saying "my father and his father are brothers" (p. 897, para. 11), ruled out a dispute with him, and clarified that although when they were children, the relationship between them was better, but at the relevant time it was normal, and they worked together in building covering. He himself lived in his parents' house, about a 7-10 minute walk from his grandmother's house, but he would come to visit her whenever he wanted, and even lived there from the age of 14 until the age of 19. He knew the witness Y.A., both because of his mother's neighbor to the grandmother's house, and because of the family relationship between them - against the background of Y.A.'s brother's marriage. To the defendant's aunt. In describing the day of the incident, he noted that it was an election day on which he did not work. He planned to walk around the market for a while, but he arrived early and came to the grandmother's house to visit her, after not seeing her for a week or a week. Although he came from the front of the house, he did not enter through the main door, but turned to the back path that leads to the yard and the storeroom. There, he met his grandmother, who was standing with a shopping cart. He approached her, kissed her head and asked how she was doing. After she told him that she was fine, and went to the clinic for about half an hour, he said he would wait for her until she returned, and then he said, "I walk in the yard, look, enter my storeroom, sit, smoke a cigarette, walk, come back..." (p. 899, para. 19). He denied that he had entered the house (whose back door was open all the time, according to him) at this point, and described what he had done, as follows: "Sitting like that, walking like that, smoking a cigarette, looking, I just know what? I didn't have a phone either, I didn't have a phone at all. I repented, really loud, no girls, no clubs, no drugs, nothing. Nothing, nothing, really nothing, you got it? I repented with myself" (pp. 899, 21-22 and 24-25). After sitting for 5 or 10 minutes, without having a clock or phone to assess it more accurately, he heard shouts from the house, "No, enough, who, what." He went in and saw two people - one with a knife and the other with a Japanese knife, about the deceased Ben, and asked them: "What do you have? What are you doing? Who are you? What is it? What's here there?" (p. 900, paras. 1-2). When asked what they did to the deceased, he replied: "They stab him, they cut him off" (ibid., Q. 6). According to him, he went "inside" and tried to separate. The one with the Japanese knife told him, "Get out of here or I, or I don't know what I'm going to do to you, I'll cut you." They were two people he didn't know. One of them came to cut him, and he grabbed his Japanese knife and hand, and stayed with him in the house for a while, while the deceased and the other assailant went out to the balcony. At this time, he and the assailants saw someone on the roof (apparently referring to the witness M.A., A.W.) looking at them. The assailants left the scene and Y.A. came. The defendant approached the deceased and asked him "what, what?", kneeling beside him, his hands closed and he wiped them over his shirt (showing the court the fingers of his hands, which had undergone surgery). He moved the deceased from a side position, on his back, so that he could breathe better, and then Y.A., who was standing at a distance, said, "Maor, leave him." He added on his own initiative that he had not seen Y.A. Dialling, and in general, that he had not seen anything and was dizzy because he had lost a lot of blood. Y.A. He told him, "Get out of here, run away," and he walked towards the house. According to him, the attackers did not come out "from around the house," so he went inside to see if anyone was there. The door was open, and he went out of the house, toward the stairs, looked to the right and left, and didn't know where to turn or what to do. He walked with his hands on his sides, and then a car came in front of him and someone told him to sit on the sidewalk, and began to treat his hands and bandage them. Since then, he says, and for about two weeks, he remembers nothing - neither that he was taken in an ambulance, nor that he was in the hospital - "I don't remember being taken to the ambulance, I don't remember when I got into the ambulance, I don't remember anything, since then I don't remember for two weeks I don't remember myself at all. I don't remember anything, nothing, nothing, really nothing" (p. 904, paras. 16-18). When asked why he did not tell the police, he replied that he did not believe the police, who had abused him and other children from the neighborhood where he had lived since they were little. During the detention stages, he did not want to be represented, and assumed that he would be released a few days later, when "the people" would be caught. Even during the detention hearings, he did not share with the judge that he was innocent, because he did not physically appear in court, and participated in the hearing through visual communication, which made it difficult for him to conduct a conversation. When asked if he refused to open his phone at the police, he replied that he did not have a phone at all, and denied that he had sent threatening messages to the deceased, as the victim's mother claimed in court. He confirmed that he knew that the deceased had served a prison sentence for drug abuse, and that he continued to do so even after his release from prison, but, according to him, he himself did not intervene in it, and since his own release he has tried to build a new life. When asked whether he had a file and whether he opened it near the deceased, as M.A. noted. In his testimony - that he had seen someone make such an opening movement, the defendant answered in the negative (in his cross-examination of July 11, 2023, p. 955, para. 28, and to the question of what M.A. saw him. He opened, replied "nothing," and raised as a possibility, "Maybe the attacker, he didn't see me"). He also denied that he had stabbed the deceased, and said that all he did was to help him and straighten his legs. The defendant denied any dispute with the witness Y.A., any acquaintance with the witness M.A., and a dispute with his family, against the background of his previous imprisonment (p. 907). Immediately at the beginning of his cross-examination by the prosecutor, the defendant remarked that she had a "cunning smile", similar to the policemen he did not like. He answered in the negative, to the question of whether there had been a break between him and the deceased prior to the incident, and clarified that they would talk and work together. When the prosecutor tried to define the relationship between them as "friendship", he replied that he had no friends, but that he was at peace with everyone. Later on, he again ruled out a dispute with the deceased or with his father (p. 911). When the plaintiff slammed him in the face for telling policeman Netanel Weizmann in the ambulance (P/28A) that Ben Dadoun had stabbed him "because of a family dispute with his father a long time ago", he replied that he did not remember anything from that day, and that he had not said such a thing. Even after he was told what he had said, he insisted that he did not remember it, that he did not hear well, and that he was wearing an infusion and a mask at the time. When he was asked again what family dispute he was talking about, he replied to the plaintiff, "Let me explain something to you... I sat on his father before imprisonment" (pp. 916, paras. 26 and 28). He described on his own initiative a telephone conversation that took place, according to him, between the deceased and his own parents (when he was in prison), during which the deceased told them that he had nothing to do with him. When asked again what he had with the deceased's father, he replied, "First of all, I don't want to repeat the past as it was in the past, it's not interesting at the moment, it's not interesting, and don't ask questions about my past. Talk to me about what happened now, and my past is not interesting" (p. 917, paras. 17-18). However, when the plaintiff insisted that she was interested, he replied that the deceased's father was a man who could not live with him and that his wife had divorced him, and added that his parents had thrown the deceased out of the house, and therefore he lived with his grandmother. He again denied a dispute with him, and when the plaintiff accused him of being the one who raised the issue of the family dispute with the policeman, he replied, "I don't remember saying such a thing... I don't think that a policeman sees a person who is unconscious, a person who doesn't speak, a person who doesn't understand anything (unclear), asks questions (unclear), asks me if I murdered Yitzhak Rabin I would have told him yes" (pp. 919, paras. 10 and 15-17). Even so, and after the plaintiff accused him of trying to present a "pink picture" regarding the nature of the relationship between them, it is appropriate to reply that it was a financial dispute, about work he had done and for which the deceased's father had not paid him, and belittled him (this was also repeated by H.N. The other, dated July 11, 2023, where he clarified that he had stabbed the deceased's father, because "a person's sweat is not taken" (p. 914, s. 32). With regard to the deceased, he repeatedly denied that he feared him, or threatened him, and added that if he had been afraid, he would not have been in his territory. He called the deceased's mother a "big liar" (p. 932, s. 27). When asked whether his release from prison, in November 2019, was a continuation of his stabbing of the deceased's father, he replied to the plaintiff, "I don't know what you're talking about" (p. 935, s. 23). With regard to the late David Shlomo, he replied that he was his father's brother who died of an illness in 2016, and claimed that he did not remember the date of his birth. When he was presented with the medic's version, who asked him how he was injured in his hands, and he replied that he had fallen, he said again that he did not remember it, and assumed that he might have told him that he had been injured. After confirming that the medic had treated his hands, and to the question of why he did not tell him about the two attackers mentioned in his later version, he replied, "What should I tell him, a person I don't know at all, I don't know who he is at all, if he is a medic, or if... You ask me questions that don't make sense at all" (p. 939, paras. 15-19). When asked why he did not mention the deceased and the fact of his injury, he replied that there was no need for it, from S.A. He called for help, and yes, he was not asked about it, and that such questions are relevant only at the police station. He later added that he was not even aware that Ben was in critical condition. In response to the court's question, he clarified that at the time he did not know that an ambulance had been called, but assumed that if Y.A., who knew Ben, had been there, he would probably have taken care of it. When asked again why he did not say that he had been attacked by two men, and why he did not suggest that the police try to catch them, he replied that he did not know them, and did not want to endanger himself and his family by the possibility that they were from "criminal organizations", since,