Even the delay in filing the indictment does not justify accepting the defense from justice. Indeed, the indictment was filed about five years after the alleged offenses were committed, but it should be remembered that this is a complex and sensitive investigation involving Customs and Israel Police investigators, who were required to investigate many affairs in which non-parties were involved-Few. In these circumstances, and even if it was appropriate to expedite the filing of the indictment, as much as possible, one should not complain to the prosecution or the investigating authorities, and this certainly does not justify the cancellation of the indictment. It should be noted that one of the reasons underlying the delay relates to the impossibility of interrogating Elhanan Tenenbaum, who spent several years in Hezbollah captivity and it was not possible to examine certain issues that arose during the interrogation, in his absence.
In this regard, it is worth noting that Elchanan Tenenbaum's testimony was important, at least with regard to some of the passages.
Counsel for the defendants elaborated on what they perceived as the failures of the investigation and prosecution. I examined the arguments seriously, and I did not find that these were omissions that substantially impaired the defendants' ability to defend themselves or their ability to raise reasonable doubt as to their guilt. As the Supreme Court's ruling stated, "Reality proves that in almost every case it is possible to point to investigative failures of one kind or another... The question is to what extent the 'nothingness' gnaws at the weight of the 'is'..." (Criminal Appeal 9908/04 Nasreddin v. State of Israel [unpublished, [published in Nevo], given on July 31, 2006]). I did not get the impression that the investigators conducted a tendentious investigation and had a single goal in mind, to bring about the conviction of the defendants, in whole or in part, at any cost. The claim that the interrogators made the interrogees understand that if they incriminated the defendants, they would save themselves from criminal entanglement, was not proven before me, and it even contradicts the evidence in the file.