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For the past two weeks, a 15-year-old boy has been at the center of a cross-examination in Judge Zayed Falah’s courtroom in Haifa. On June 30, 2019, the day Salomon Taka was shot to death, he was 13. His grandmother gave him that morning a gift for a bar mitzvah: a thousand shekels in cash, in five 200-note bills.
In his testimony, which began last Tuesday, the boy said he came to Beit Ha’am kindergarten in Kiryat Haim to meet a friend, one of four boys older than him, including Salomon Taka. The friend, called S. here, was a different kind of friend. During the interrogation, the boy defined him as “my back”, and refused to explain what it was about. According to him, that day S. told him that he had bought him a birthday present, drugs (he said he did not know what kind), and demanded that he pay for them. The boy said he paid 200 shekels.
At the hearing, the boy admitted reluctantly that he was blackmailed by S., and that in the following days – after the death of their friend Taka – S. demanded more and more money from him in threats on social media along with another boy, H., who was also at the event. When the debt is not paid on time, it is doubled and then quadrupled. In the two and a half years that have passed since the boy moved to another school and changed his phone number. Advocate Yair Nadshi, the defense attorney for the policeman who shot Bataka to death, asks him if he did it to evade the boys who blackmailed him, and he confirms with a weak response.
The boy’s story is hard to digest. His father is sitting in the hall, his gaze off, the gaze of a father who knows he has failed to protect his son from the reality of middle school drugs, threats and protectionism. The heart goes out to the boy, who has not received any protection since the incident, but Nadashi comes to tell only one story (actually two, we will get to the other immediately), and he takes a short break, designed to make it easier for the witness, to address the judge: “The witness is afraid to tell the truth” He says when everyone returns to the courtroom, “Now I understand that he is not afraid of his father, but of the deceased’s family members.
He is not afraid of his father, but of the members of the family of the deceased. “They threatened him, said he brought about the death of Salomon Taka, and therefore I ask to take them out of the courtroom and have a closed-door hearing.”
The prosecutor on behalf of the Department of Police Investigations, Adv. Ronen Yitzhak: “To get a family and the public out of the courtroom, you need something beyond the feeling of my friend. I’m not ready to close doors. “
Judge Fallah addresses the boy: “The policeman’s lawyer tells me that you are afraid to tell the truth and speak and is afraid and does not say everything because of the presence of the deceased Taka family and the people who came with them. Is that right?” The boy replied, “No.”
“Do you feel comfortable?” The judge asked. “Yes”. “The application is denied,” the judge says, “I was not convinced.”
Acrobatics to hide the cop
The full names of the three boys, S., H. and A., Taka’s friends who were minors at the time of the incident, like the name of the witness – still a minor – are repeatedly thrown into the hall space. Defense counsel repeats them dramatically at every opportunity, appointing the list of senior members of Abergele’s organization. The name of the shooting officer is not mentioned even once.
It’s not just his name. Even before he was admitted to the courtroom, at the exact time with the judge (which does not allow him to be photographed, not even for face-blurring advertising, because from the moment the judge enters the cameras are off and out of the courtroom), two other people were standing behind the glass of the defendant. , And they lean against the glass and hide the interior of the cell. One of them continued to stand there throughout the hearing, hiding the policeman who was shooting him in the body. By the next hearing they were already three. This morning one of them said they were police officers on duty, accompanying their friend.
There is no way to catch the defendant’s gaze or even look at him closely. I sat for seven hours two meters away from him, and I can not say what he looked like. His wife, whom the prosecution summoned to testify at the beginning of the hearings, testified behind a screen.
The activists who accompany the family say that since the shooting, the policeman and his family have been living in a hiding place. There was a claim that he had moved to another city. The threats officer who goes in and out of the judge’s office claims that they are secured at the highest level. He gets to the dock through a sterile area and the court guard makes it clear that there is no chance of seeing him and there should not even be a picture of him on camera, even if not for publication.
The atmosphere of fear in the hall is maintained week after week. Advocate Nadshi repeatedly claims at every opportunity that the Teka family and associates intimidate anyone connected to the police officer or testifying at trial. The gun on his part. He explains to the judge: “He (the boy) looks at the audience and they scare him.” No matter how many times the judge rejects the claim, Nadashi will come back and pump it up.
The narrator’s narrative
As stated, Adv. Nadashi has another line, which he also finds difficult to give up, and no matter how many proceedings he disqualifies: Taka is a criminal who brought his own death. Advocate Yitzhak demands that the questions be disqualified and clarifies that he must not talk about Teka’s criminal past.
“My colleague is violating a judicial decision,” he says repeatedly, referring to the Magistrate’s Court decision in Haifa in May 2020, according to which there is nothing in the criminal record about Taka or any of his friends – relevant to the trial of the police officer charged with causing his death. That hearing was held at the instigation of Adv. Nadshi, who sought to obtain the criminal records, and came out with a decision that prevents him from making any claim based on Teka’s past.
“Were you S.’s ‘client’ who provided you with drugs?”, Nadshi asks the witness, and when he sees the prosecutor’s eyes and the judge is quick to add: “You do not have to answer.” “I do not want to answer,” the boy replies.
“Do you know or know children that S. and his gang sold drugs to?” Nadshi continues.
“Do not know”.
“A situation where S. or Teka tried to recruit you to sell drugs to children at school or in the neighborhood?”
“No”.
After a few minutes of interrogation, in which the boy clarifies that he did not know Taka beyond the one time he saw him, Nadshi tries to wing: “If we invite your mother and ask what do you think of Taka?”.
The boy: “She did not know him.”
Prosecutor: “And I object to the question.”
Judge: “And I accept the objection.”
“It did not interest them to investigate for example if there were drugs,” says Adv. Nadshi on another occasion, “just to find some culprit to
To close the social noise that was. “
Nadshi tries to reverse the previous decision. From Judge Fallah’s courtroom, everyone jumps together – the prosecutors, the defense attorney, the shooting officer and his protective friends – two floors up to Judge Avishai Kaufman’s courtroom, to discuss again whether the defense attorney is allowed to use the trial in the past of Taka and his friends. There is currently no decision yet, and the main trial continues. Advocate Nadshi does not hesitate to ask until he is brought in for a few minutes (his full testimony will be heard next week) whether he is drunk or drugged.
“Do not shout at me!”
Amy Palmor, the former director general of the Ministry of Justice, who was responsible for setting up the unit to fight racism after leading an inter-ministerial team to eradicate racism against Ethiopians, enters the courtroom in the middle of the hearing. .
“I read in one of the posts of ‘Mothers on the Watch’ that they do not treat their parents with respect, and I thought I also want to express support,” she explains at the break. And not just for the policeman, who is supported by the large and powerful organization to which he belongs, with the addition of the policewomen’s women’s organization. ”
Emmy Palmor: “I read in one of the posts of ‘Mothers on the Watch’ that parents are not treated with respect, and I thought I also want to express support”
It was clear to her that by virtue of her position the judge would behave differently when she was in the courtroom. In the middle of the hearing, Judge Fallah suddenly attacks Taka’s mother and sister, claiming that they are interfering with his speech. “I’m translating for her,” the nurse says. “There is only one interpreter here,” the judge says angrily, raising his voice: “and when I wake you – do not shout at me!”. The nurse angrily leaves the hall and does not return.
“Last time it worked,” says Palmor, “this time less.”
Whose sentence is this?
In the coming weeks, two more of Taka’s friends, H. and S., will testify. A., the third boy, was sent to the police to testify, after he refused to come despite the court order, and he was brought to a handcuffed courtroom.
Nadshi prepares his weapon well. “The defendant stumbled upon a violent criminal incident during which he had to deal alone with a gang of drugged and intoxicated criminals,” he flattered his arguments before Judge Kaufman, who agreed for a moment to hear them. “Beyond the importance of the reliability of the witnesses, the importance (of disclosing their criminal records – according to) is to show that those witnesses, including the deceased who attacked the defendant, were dangerous people even before that. A past of violence against the background of drinking alcohol. “
Nadashi ignores two important things, and prosecutors Adv. Yitzhak and Adv. Liat Unionian will be required to mention them in front of his barrage of intimidation: Who came out of school and games, maybe even confronted each other, on the avenue. This is the main reason why their past is irrelevant to the discussion.
Moreover, even if they are or were criminals, drunk and drugged all over the head – it does not matter at all. The trial is not the trial of the criminals, it is the trial of the policeman, the one who will testify in about two weeks, and the central question is what is our expectation of someone whose job it is to keep civilians safe. No matter what the boys did, nothing should bring death from hot fire in the heart of a park in the heart of a city in Israel.
No matter what the boys did, nothing should bring death from hot fire in the heart of a park in the heart of a city in Israel
To explain how threatened and anxious the policeman was for his life, today during the investigation of the boy, Adv. Nadshi played the recording of the policeman’s phone call to Hotline 100, which took place while he was hiding from the boys in the parking lot. A voice saying to the policeman “I will give you a block”, and asked the boy to identify who the speaker was. But when you listen to the recording, you can understand what the policeman really saw before he pulled out his weapon. The caller asks him what happened. The policeman, stressed, answers her: “There are two or three Ethiopians here and another little boy.”