The Kfar Duma case – Unanswered questions
See also:
Six house-torchings in one year: What actually happened in Kfar Duma?
The reenactment – Where is the missing recording?
The cement pillars that Ben Uliel did not remember
The black car, selective validation of testimony
The GSS admitted that the Kfar Duma murder has not been completely solved
The matter of “concealed information”
In a criminal trial in which the conviction is based on a confession the existence of “concealed information” is necessary. “Concealed information” describes the details of a crime stated by an interrogatee that are known only to the perpetrator and could not have been learned from an outside source, such as a newspaper article.
In a standard trial, the purpose of determining the existence of “concealed information” is to verify that the confession is reliable, and therefore the information must be special and unusual facts that an average person would not be able to presume even if they decided to give a false confession.
Ben Uliel’s reenactment of the crime he supposedly committed was contaminated from the start. Against all regulations, the head of the police investigative team accompanied Ben Uliel during the reenactment, as did the GSS agent who was in charge of his torturous interrogation sessions and was documented hinting to him to remember “what they had discussed earlier”. The details that Ben Uliel gave do not match the definition of “concealed information”.
According to police regulations, a reenactment must be led by an officer who is not a member of the team investigating the case and does not know the details of the investigation. This is to ensure that the reenactment will be free of all influences from anyone who could give clues to the defendant being investigated.
The three pieces of “concealed information” that Ben Uliel supposedly knew and were presented in the trial are 1) the color of the bottle that was thrown at the house (green, the standard color of a beer bottle), 2) the presence of mosquito netting in the window, and 3) a black car that was parked next to the house. According to the police, the third detail was corroborated by the testimony of eyewitness Ibrahim Dawabsheh.
The first two details supposedly proving the existence of “concealed information” do not require much explanation. They are standard facts that anyone who decided to confess rather than return to the GSS torture chamber would guess. The third detail is no less than dumbfounding.
Since the July 2015 arson attack on the Dawabsheh family’s house in Kfar Duma, Honenu has assisted many Jews accused of involvement with the crime. For a selection of posts describing Honenu Attorneys’ representation of defendants and GSS interrogatees, click here. To familiarize our readers with the case, Honenu has gathered – click here – various articles and short videos on the subject.