Police: Witnesses' call wouldn't have helped find terrorist
Head of police's operations dept. calls reports 'a storm in a teacup,' noting that even if police had followed up on call from girls who saw Nashat Melhem on bus going north, it would not have changed police's operational decisions.
The Israel Police dismissed on Wednesday reports on the failure of its emergency call center in responding to a call by two girls who saw terrorist Nashat Melhem take the bus north shortly after murdering three people in Tel Aviv.
According to a report by Israel Radio's Carmela Menashe, the two sisters contacted the police four times - twice on the day of the attack and twice in the days that followed - reporting that they saw a man with blood on his clothes who they later realized, after seeing his photos on TV, was terrorist Nashat Melhem.
The head of the Israel Police's Operations Department, Maj.-Gen. Aaron Aksol, called the reports "a storm in a teacup."
"The call was received five hours after the attack. The report was passed on to the Israel Police's intelligence unit," Aksol told reporters on Wednesday evening.
"Even if we had questioned those girls at 8pm, it would not have changed the operational decisions we made that night. The possibility that he was in the north was taken into consideration. That night, the YAMAM raided several homes in Wadi Ara," he added.
Aksol insisted that "The Israel Police acted decisively and clearly and this would not have changed our activity. Catching a terrorist after a week, I can tell you as someone familiar with the intelligence, required a complex intelligence effort. There wasn't even one moment in which we did not have a clear idea of the intelligence picture."
The briefing to the press was supposed to be given by Tel Aviv District Commander Maj.-Gen. Benzi Sau, but it was entrusted to Aksol at the last moment.
Police officials said that behind the scenes, Sau must have refused to be associated with the failure, especially since he is due to retire from the force next week. "I don't know exactly what happened there, but Benzi Sau did the right thing not standing at the front and taking responsibility over a failure he was not responsible for," said a police officer.
According to the Israel Radio report, after a man with blood on his clothes sat down next to them on the bus, the two sisters approached the bus driver and shared their suspicions with him, but the driver calmed them down by telling them the suspicious man was about to get off the bus anyway.
The two girls heard the driver tell Melhem "from here (this bus stop) you can go to Wadi Ara, get off here."
At around 8pm, after seeing Melhem's photo on the news and realizing he was the man sitting next to them on the bus, the two shared their suspicions with their employer, and he called the police's emergency call center. The policeman on the other side of the line told the employer he will hear back from the police, and when no call back came by midnight, the employer called the police again.
The emergency call center told the employer to call the police's non-emergency call center, and after waiting half an hour on the line, he gave up and went to bed.
On Sunday morning, when one of the sisters saw no one had returned their calls, she called again, but the police once again paid her no heed and told her to call the non-emergency call center.
On the Monday following the attack, when the second sister called a fourth time, she was told "if no one got back to you by now - it means it's not relevant."
