Supreme Court President Esther Hayut on Tuesday morning rejected Amiram Ben-Uliel’s request to hold another hearing in an expanded panel in his case, on the grounds that his confession had been squeezed from him by the Shin Bet with the use of torture. He will continue to serve three life sentences plus 17 years for the murder of the Dawabsheh family on July 31, 2015.
The district court threw out two of Ben-Uliel’s confessions because they were given under torture, but accepted a third confession which served as a key piece of evidence against him in his trial.
On September 1, 2022, Supreme Court Justices Yitzhak Amit, Yosef Elron, and Shaul Shohat unanimously rejected Ben-Uliel’s claim that he was interrogated under torture by the Shin Bet, and therefore the confessions extracted from him and the subsequent reconstruction he performed for the police under the threat of more torture were illegal and should have been inadmissible.
Back in September, Otzma Yehudit Chairman MK Itamar Ben Gvir, who was later appointed National security Minister, attacked the ruling, saying, “Today there is no dispute that Uliel’s confession was given after he was interrogated under torture and this is a case of abject injustice. The laws of the State of Israel require the rejection of the confession, but unfortunately, the Supreme Court justices ignored this or did not give any real weight to this conduct. The Supreme Court ruled that he was tortured and instead of setting him free and issuing a logical ruling, the court sent him to three life sentences. It’s a black day for democracy.”
The investigation of the Duma arson/murder case was rife with irregularities on the part of the Shin Bet, which was the reason the same court dropped the charges against Ben Uliel’s co-defendant, a minor, because of the use of torture during his investigation, as well as other aggressive methods. But in Ben Uliel’s case, the judges noted that “our impression of the defendant and his behavior showed that there is no risk of a false confession here. His confessions to the investigator were authentic. The defendant was able to identify the window where a second incendiary bottle was placed and was able to identify characteristics and hidden elements.” They further stated that “it is not possible to determine whether there was an additional operator based on evidence found in the scene.”
Go figure – what’s the amount of torture and beating that still guarantees the confession is “authentic?” The answer resides somewhere between the courtroom and a dungeon.
“Concerning tire and shoe tracks – the overall impression did not lead to clear findings,” the judges concluded. “It is impossible to suggest that this was not an event with a racial background according to the defendant’s perceptions. There was suspicion that he was a member of an organization, but not beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Attorney Yitzhak Bam, who represents Ben Uliel along with Attorney Asher Ohayon, said: “After the court had accepted the confession and the reconstruction of the crime that was given under the influence of torture, the conviction was only a matter of judicial acrobatics that mediated the confession with the conflicting evidence discovered in the field. Once the court overcame the acrobatic task, it opened our path to appeal to the Supreme Court for the very acceptance of a confession given under torture.”
“The only point of light in the verdict is the court’s reluctance to convict Ben Uliel of membership in a terrorist organization,” Bam said.
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The following was published by yours truly on May 18, 2020, after the conviction.
On July 31, 2015, two family homes in Duma village were firebombed by one or more masked attackers. According to all the reports, the first house was empty, and the attacker or attackers then went to a second house, where 18-month-old Ali Sa’ad Dawabsheh was burnt to death; his parents and 4-year-old brother were critically injured and rushed to Israeli hospitals, where both parents died of their injuries.
Two graffiti slogans in Hebrew were found on the house walls: “Revenge” with a star of David, and “Long live the King Messiah” with the image of a crown.
On January 3, 2016, two suspects were indicted. Amiram Ben-Uliel, then 21, was charged with murder. The other, a minor whose identity was withheld, was charged as an accessory. In June 2018, the Lod District Court accepted and ruled out confessions obtained under torture.
However, it confirmed another confession, as well as a crime reconstruction by Ben-Uliel. In July 2018, the minor, who had confessed to four arson attempts and two acts of vandalism and hate graffiti against Arabs, was released to house arrest. He was absolved from responsibility for the Duma murders because his confessions were ruled to have been extracted under torture. In May 2019, the minor, now a young adult, made a plea deal in which the prosecution agreed not to ask for a sentence exceeding 5 and a half years in prison (most of which he had already served).
It should be noted that over the past four and a half years, the prosecution has been unable to settle the serious contradictions between the different eyewitness accounts from the night of the event, and has simply chosen to go with one testimony and ignore the rest – leaving a wide gap of reasonable doubt. But the district court on Monday managed to jump through hoops to side with the prosecution.
Obviously, the fate of the appeal will depend on the panel of judges Supreme Court President Justice Esther Hayut will decide to assemble. And, as we try to mention as often as possible in these reports, it was a Supreme Court judge, Yoram Danziger, who sanctioned the torture of the two defendants, under a cockamamie excuse of there being a “ticking bomb.” This was despite the fact that the Shin Bet never mentioned any suspicions of a plot being hatched out there to burn down another Arab home. So, it was basically giving the clandestine police permission to torture Israeli citizens.
A fine Supreme Court you got there, Justice Hayut.
By the way, in 2016, there were at least six arson cases in Duma village, where the warring local clans regularly use firebombing the way regular people use disparaging comments on Facebook. And, also, the names of the two warring clans are Dawabsheh and Dawabsheh.
