“Handwashing” case in dramatic development. Police announced today (Thursday) that Eliezer Berland, his son-in-law Zvi Zucker and the mayor who were arrested in the murder and disappearance case in Jerusalem three decades ago, will be released under house arrest. Berland, who is in jail for the offenses of extortion and fraud, will be returned to prison. The reason for their release is that the Israeli police apparently did not prove their involvement in the murder.
Against the third detainee, Baruch Sharvit, the police filed a prosecutor’s statement and he will be charged with the offense of murdering the boy Nissim Sheetrit. Avi Edri’s murder case is still under investigation, and Sharvit will not be charged at this stage. According to the suspicion, the disappearances and murders of the boy Nissim Sheetrit in 1986 and of Avi Edri in 1990 were carried out on the mission of the head of the Shuvu Banim congregation by a group of believers who were operating at the time as part of the chastity guards.
During Berland’s interrogation, a meeting took place between him and Meir Sheetrit, the brother of the missing boy. At the meeting, Berland told Sheetrit: “You can sit seven and say Kaddish, sorry I did not tell you that 35 years ago.”
This week, Berland was taken to a cemetery in Jerusalem, where he met with the family of the murdered father, Edri. This was revealed during a hearing in the Jerusalem court on the extension of Rabbi Berland’s detention. At the end of the hearing, the leader of the Shuvu Banim community referred to the suspicions against him and claimed that he had not given an order to murder. “Thirty days I wait for the people from the chastity watch to be brought to me to say I sent them.” He added: “I am ready now, not too late. I do not know any of them. They have not heard a word from me, it is a blood libel.”