The District Court in Lod is expected to issue its verdict Tomorrow, Monday in the case of Amiram Ben-Uliel, the only remaining Jewish defendant in the July 31, 2015 arson in the Arab village of Duma, which became a murder case following the death of three members of the Dawabsheh family, one of them an 18-month-old infant.
The case has been going on for close to five years, and the date for the verdict has been pushed off – but it is expected that on Monday, the court will finally issue its verdict.
Back in 2018, the court rejected some of the confessions against one of the accused (who has been let go since) because the Shin Bet had used torture to get them. This was done with the express approval of then Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein and the Supreme Court Justice Yoram Danziger (State Prosecutor Drops Confessions of Duma Arson Defendants Acquired Via ‘Special Means’).
In June 2016, the state prosecution dropped its investigation of Kokhav HaShahar youth coordinator Natanel Forkowitz, who was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the Duma village arson murder. That announcement came six months after Forkowitz had been picked up by the Shin Bet without any stated charges, and was interrogated for 12 days without being allowed to see his lawyer (Prosecution Quietly Closes Duma Arson Suspect Case for Lack of Evidence).
Honeu legal aid society CEO Shmuel Meidad, said in a statement: “There’s only one way the truth will come out tomorrow: a complete acquittal of Amiram of the serious charge against him and his release tomorrow morning to his wife and daughter, from whom he was brutally cut off four and a half years ago.”
Meidad called for the establishment of an investigative committee to look into the failures of the Duma investigation: “I hope that Israeli decision-makers will be able to set up a state investigative committee, which will conduct a house inspection of the mischief of Shin Bet Jewish Section interrogators and the prosecutor’s office, who collaborated in this crime.”
Ben Uliel has been detained in solitary confinement in Eshel Prison. He is not allowed to use the phone and now, over the past two months, his family is not allowed to visit him because of the coronavirus pandemic.