Caselaw

Criminal Case (Be’er Sheva) 20958-08-24 State of Israel – F.M. v. Muhammad Azzam - part 41

April 30, 2026
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With regard to the weight of the defendant's interrogations in the ISA, the case law held:

"The evidentiary weight of the memoranda in support of the oral testimony of the interrogator whose record will be determined in each case on its own merits, in accordance with the credibility of the witness in the eyes of the trial court and taking into account the circumstances of the registration of the memo, the degree of detail in which it was written, and the close time between the delivery of the statement described in the memo and the date of its writing" ( Criminal Appeal 6613/99 Samirak v. State of Israel (Nevo, 4 March 2002)).

With the exception of the memos prepared by the investigator in charge "Aya", through which P/13 and P/14 were submitted, in his case, all the other interrogations of the defendant by the ISA were submitted with the consent of the defense, which waived the interrogation of their editors.  Not only that, but in its summaries, the defense abandoned all of its arguments regarding the facts and the agreed evidentiary basis, including claims that it first raised against Investigator Aya during her cross-examination.  In addition, the defense also confirmed the defendant's confession that he consumed DASH content and downloaded it to his personal devices, including that he confessed to his various interrogators that he had committed a sedition.

The defendant's confessions also meet the external test, which requires additional corroborating evidence to the confession of "something else."  Between these two tests, there is a "parallelism of forces" ratio, i.e., the higher the reliability of the confession according to the internal test, the less weighty it is possible to suffice with an evidentiary addition and vice versa (Criminal Appeal 4995/23 Anonymous v. State of Israel (Nevo, July 29, 2024) and Criminal Appeal 8589/13 Ramilat v. State of Israel (Nevo, January 27, 2015)).  In the case of the defendant, the reliability of his confessions according to the internal test is high, along with a great deal of evidence that clearly corroborates their content, supports and reinforces what he gave to his interrogators, as detailed in detail above.

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