Escaped rapist Benny Sela has been wandering free for two weeks now, and police still have no leads on his whereabouts. The probe into Sela’s escape ,headed by Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yaron, cast heavy doubt on the police, Shin Bet and Internal Security Ministry.
The Yaron committee’s full report exposes a string of embarrassing failures. A close reading of the report reveals a theater of the absurd.
The 50-page report describes the day of the escape in detail:
On Thursday evening, November 23, 2006, Benny Sela left the Eshel Prison, escorted by Shin Bet guards from the Nahshon unit. Under security, he was transferred by bus in an isolated chamber, with both his legs and hands handcuffed.
He had with him a bag with personal belongings – including dark sweat pants. At this stage he wore prison garb, with a white T-shirt and another pair of pants on under his uniform.
Escort officers arrive without handcuffs
On Thursday afternoon, Shai Djerassi, commander of the Tel Aviv District’s police escort unit, informed Sgt. Major Haim Tirim that a prisoner was waiting at the Nitzan passage and had to be taken to court in Tel Aviv Friday morning.
Tirim was asked to call and coordinate the transfer with Sgt. Isak Butrashvili, who was to accompany his in the morning to transfer the prisoner.
On Friday morning at around 7:45, the two police officers – Butrashvili and Tirim - arrived at the Nitzan transfer center and took the van designated for the transfer of prisoners which was parked outside the prison. Contrary to regulations, the two took the van without checking equipment first.
Sgt. Butrshvili had a pair of handcuffs on his person and a pair of leg cuffs in his bag – but his bag was checked at the entrance to the prison. Sgt. Major Tirim arrived with no handcuffs at all.
His handcuffs were later found in a locked trunk in the escort vehicle with numerous other pairs of cuffs. The cops, however, didn’t have keys to the trunk.
At Nitzan, Butrashvili checked out the prisoner he was tasked with transferring. The clerk there told him that in addition to the first prisoner Dimitri Wolf, they must also take Benny Sela to the Tel Aviv Labor Court.
Butrashvili claimed that he was not told in advance that he would have to transfer Benny Sela. He then spoke with the commander on duty of the escort unit, Sgt. Yosef Yaakov, who was at the jail of the TA court.
According to Butrashvili, at some point he understood the prisoner with highly dangerous and even identified Sela from having escorted him on previous occasions.
Yaakov told Butrashvili that an inquiry will be conducted. Simultaneously, he called the clerk at Tel Aviv's Juvenile Court, which is located next to the Labor Court, and asked her to check whether hearing were being held at the Labor Court.
While waiting for directions from Yaakov, the two escorting officers took charge of the prisoners. It was at that point that the story splits into two versions.
According to Sergeant Ovad Yehezkel at Nitzan, the escorting officers arrived with both hand and leg cuffs for both prisoners. He said he himself took the prisoners out into the yard where he then watched the escort officers cuff Sela in both his hands and legs, whereas Dimitri was only handcuffed. He said only then where the prisoners escorted into the truck parked outside.
In contrast, according to the escorting officers, both prisoners – Sela and Dimitri – were released from the "filtering cell" and walked out, with no cuffs on at all, to the escort truck parked outside, although procedures call for cuffing to be done inside the cell.
Gave in to Sela for fear of being sued
Nearby the truck, Tirim received cuffs from Butrashvili and proceeded to cuff Sela's hands, without locking the cuffs, and then put him in one of the truck's cells. The other prisoner, Dimitri, was put in a separate cell in the truck with not cuffs at all.
Sela left Nitzan equipped with a folder of documents in a plastic bag and a bag of personal belongings which he insisted on taking with him. Procedures do not permit prisoners taking personal belongings with them to court.
Both the prison guards and officers allowed Sela to take his belongings with him in fears that he would press charges against them if they did not. According to the escorting officers, Sela took his belongings with him into his cell on the truck.
Yehezkel, on the other hand, claimed that Sela's bag was taken from him by the escorting officers and placed in the front of the truck beside the driver. At this stage, the officers and prisoners waited in the truck for the order to leave by the commanding officer on duty of the TA district escort unit.
Both escorting officers seat in the front of the truck, with Tirim driving and Butrashvili in the passenger's seat – something which is against police procedure.
During the 20 minute wait, Sela asked Butrashvili if he could go to the bathroom. Tirim then took him out of the truck and escorted him to the nearby waiting pavilion with his hands cuffed where he proceeded to urinate.
The officer on duty at Nitzan was angry at the escorting officer for allowing Sela to urinate there. Sela and the officer apologized, and then Sela was returned to the truck.
At that stage, Yaakov received a message from a court clerk saying that the courthouse was dark and did not seem to have any activity.
Yaakov then ordered Butrashvili to bring Sela to the holding facility at the TA courthouse, at which time his order included the words "at least he'll take a trip". Butrashvili said that he did not cuff Sela upon leaving the holding facility because it was against procedure to cuff prisoners in unsecured areas.
Did Sela use travel time to unlock handcuffs?
The question of why the escorting officers did not break the lock on the handcuff trunk in the truck remained unanswered.
Butrashvili and prisoner Dimitri entered through the first entrance door opened with a chain and began descending the stairs. At that point, before entering through the second door at the bottom of the stairs, Sela told Tirim that he had forgotten his document folder in the escort truck.
Tirim ordered Sela to remain on the staircase behind the entrance door, and went up himself towards the escort truck. Meanwhile, Sela was left unsupervised.
Another working prisoner, who was cleaning the escort truck, noticed Sela climbing the wall and alerted Sergeant Commander Shlomo Lev and Tirim.
By the committee's estimate, Sela followed Tirim up the stairs, left his bag in the staircase, snuck between a bar and a parked truck, climbed the bar and directly after that the roof, jumped onto the other side of the eight foot high wall and escaped.
Tirim ran down the stairs to alert his fellow officers who then rushed up and began searching for Sela. Sela's t-shirt was then found at a nearby parking lot, and his pants were found in a public park a few blocks away.
The committee estimated that there was a possibility that Sela used the travel time in the truck, in which he was left alone with his personal belongings, to unlock his handcuffs, allowing the escape and subsequently taking off his t-shirt.
The committee also revealed flaws in security at the holding facility such as the absences of a net over the yard, and an unroofed bridge into the yard. The lock on the entrance door to the facility was also missing, and installed only following Sela's escape.
Chains installed on the facilities inner gates left many doors open and increased the likelihood of escape. The camera was inefficient and there was also no emergency buzzer.