Main assailant identified – and released

Sunday, January 14, 2018, 11:21 The parents of youths assaulted by Arabs from the village of Qusra while hiking on a bar mitzva trip in November 2017 near Migdalim are furious. The main assailant was identified by a father who had accompanied the youths on the hike and was injured by a rock thrown at his head by the assailant. The Military Court ordered the release of the assailant due to “deficiencies in the process of identification”.
During the investigation the complainants identified the main assailant. However the judge leveled criticism at the police, who according to him should have conducted “a live line-up or prepared a photo line-up with a large number of photographs.” And added, “The fact that during the verification the complainant again identified the appellant as the individual who assaulted him, is almost completely worthless. The same deficiencies were present in both processes of identification that were conducted for the two witnesses. The fact that both the complainant and his son identified the appellant in the photographs presented to them does slightly increase the chance that the identification was correct. However it is not enough to compensate for the entirety of deficiencies in the two processes of identification which were liable to cause an erroneous identification.”
The assaulted father is certain that he has identified the assailant who assaulted the youths and injured him with a rock thrown at this head.
Honenu Attorney Chayim Bleicher, who is assisting the complainants, leveled criticism at the conduct of the judge for releasing an individual suspected of attempted murder: “The released detainee had been identified as one of the most dangerous of the assailants who was at the site, and he was identified with complete certainty by the injured [hikers], with no doubt on their part.”