Gabriel Dwait. State knew and said nothing?
Photo: Yonat Atlas
Dwait's body returned to Israel
Photo: Avi Ohayon, GPO
Report: Israel withheld information on Gabriel Dwait
IDF's intelligence branch knew what happened to man who drowned three years ago and whose body was returned this week in exchange deal with Hizbullah, but State did not bother to update his family, Yedioth Ahronoth reports
The IDF's intelligence branch had known for years what happened to Gabriel Dwait, whose body was returned
to Israel
this week as part of an exchange deal with Hizbullah,
but did not update his family, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Friday.
Some of the people who had dealt with the information and had waited to see how the State would handle the sensitive issue, expressed their surprise this week at the fact that no one had bothered to update the Dwait family members on their son's fate.
According to the report, the army received information that Dwait had drowned in the Mediterranean Sea and that his body had been swept away to the shores of Lebanon.
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"We were convinced that the relevant officials told the family what happened, but were surprised when nothing came out," one of the sources told Yedioth Ahronoth.
Dwait was laid to rest on Wednesday, as his relatives expressed their anger at Israeli officials for not updating them on Gabriel's fate and for not showing up at the funeral.
"We are angry at the fact that the government did not send even one representative," Gabriel's sister Kasai said as she left the cemetery. "This shows exactly how we are being treated. We have yet to receive all the answers and we do not believe that he drowned, because they are not letting us in on all the facts."
The IDF's Spokesperson's Office said in response, "It should be stressed that the IDF did not withhold information on this affair. As a rule, we do not reveal sensitive intelligence information and the way it was received."
The Prime Minister's Office said, "The State of Israel searched for Gabriel Dwait from the moment it learned that he gone missing. His family was informed only after the body was identified."
