Document raises questions about Duma arson investigation
Records suggests whether main suspect may not have acted alone and that security forces may have had an opportunity to question suspicious individuals near the scene of the fire that killed three members of a Palestinian family.
A document released publicly for the first time on Monday suggested that the main suspect in the murderous arson fire in Duma may not have acted alone, and that a group of settlers had been spotted leaving Duma shortly after the fire.
About ten minutes after IDF troops arrived at the village, lookouts spotted settlers walking away from the northern part of Duma to a nearby outpost of Adei Ad. Around an hour later, a military security coordinator reported seeing settlers getting out of a car in another outpost in the area, who began to walk towards the adjacent Palestinian village of Sinjil. The same security coordinator reported his belief that the settlers could have been involved in the incident.
The new details emerged in a new document submitted to the Supreme Court in the context of a petition by the Yesh Din human rights group demanding that Adei Ad be evacuated. The NGO has argued that the outpost is illegal and that it serves as a base for anti-Palestinian violence.
The records raise the question of whether it may have been possible to locate the perpetrators of the attack minutes after it occurred.
The report showed that IDF troops arrived 11 minutes after the fire started, encountering Palestinian rescue services.
It was only about ten minutes after IDF forces arrived that settlers were seen walking from Duma to Adei Ad, according to the document.
The document in question was under a gag order for months, as the state claimed that it would damage the investigation and that it was unreliable.
The indictment of the Duma suspects stated that the actual arson attack was perpetrated by Amiram Ben-Uliel alone, and that "fire began to rage and he ran away." However, the document clearly indicated that observations caught view of "settlers." This raises the question of whether the document is even reliable or whether there other perpetrators who have not yet been caught.
In addition, the indictment didn't specify where the attacker fled and where he stayed in the hours following the murder.
Yesh Din Executive Director Neta Patrick said that "the information exposed raises the suspicion that the outlaws received shelter at the illegal outpost of Adei Ad, and strengthens the claim that it is a focus point for criminal activity. Anyone who values the rule of law should demand that Adei Ad be cleared immediately, and that it not be retrospectively legitimized, as the state is shamefully choosing to do."
