The retrial of Roman Zadorov, who is accused of murdering the girl Tair Rada at the Nofei Golan school in Katzrin, on December 6, 2006, is coming to an end. The retrial exposed those present in the courtroom to major differences between the current trial and the one that preceded it, with respect to the possibility that Zadorov is the killer.
Most of the difference was felt in the judges' approach.
In contrast to the first trial in 2007, which gave the impression that the judges accepted the prosecution's version, this time the judges were more active, intervened, questioned, and even answered many times in place of the witnesses.
Although Zadorov's reconstruction and confession were not rejected, which is enough to convict him of murder, it seems that this time the prosecution is facing difficulties.
Throughout the trial Roman Zadorov has been staying at his wife's parents' house in Katzrin, where he has been under house arrest for nine months.
He ran 15 years in prison after being arrested, and was convicted three times of the murder of the late Tair Rada.
find the differences,
Twice a week he makes his way, together with his wife Olga to the Nazareth District Court, listens attentively to what is happening in the hearings and looks with a frozen expression at what is being done.
A row behind him sits Ilana Rada, Tair's mother.
Supreme Court Justice Hanan Meltzer ruled that a retrial would be held following the dispute over the bloodshed from Tair's body on the foreign shoe footprints that were at the scene, and in light of the claim that during the interrogation Zadorov was given information that enabled his reconstruction and confession.
The retrial challenged the prosecution's claims from the first trial, during which several differences were felt in relation to the conduct of the previous trial held 15 years ago.
Until the end of his trial, no forensic evidence or DNA was found at the scene that confirmed his presence at the scene.
The employer who changed version
Thus, for example, during the first trial it was alleged that on the eve of the murder Zadorov spoke with his employer, Reuven Janah, with whom he was supposed to work the next day, and that at the end of the conversation Zadorov told his wife: "A girl fell from the toilet."
This is a sophisticated detail that he was not supposed to know at that point.
While in the first trial it was stated that this information was not known to Janah, in the retrial he claimed that at the time of the conversation he knew about the murder and may have told Zadorov about it.
That's how Zadorov could tell his wife about "the girl who fell."
The judge in the Zadorov trial, whose voice,
Also, in the first trial it was alleged that on the toilet lid was a shoe heel on which blood flowed from the body.
In the retrial, the prosecution aligned itself with the defense, but claimed that it was blood folding in Tair's garment, which was then drained.
The investigation refuted the possibility that the blood flowed from the body five hours after the murder.
Testimony of the expert who collapsed
One of the most dramatic testimonies in the first trial was the testimony of Corporal Yaron Schur, who was summoned by the prosecution. Schur, a shoe imprint expert, was accepted in the first trial as a world-renowned expert.
But Schur's testimony in the retrial turned the bowl upside down, as he had difficulty explaining stains that matched the footprint of the shoe in question.
Schur's testimony caused the judges to intervene and make it clear that they could not rely on it.
Schur, who was a key witness in the first trial, testified that six shoe prints were found on the victim's pants and determined that at least two of them matched Zadorov's shoes.
In the retrial there was a different reference to what was happening in the arena and to the evidence given.
In contrast to the first trial, the retrial determined that apart from two MDA personnel, no other people were present.
The judges in the first trial were based on written transcripts prepared by the police, which were assisted by translation companies to translate from Russian into Hebrew.
At the retrial, the judges were presented with videos with subtitles and a built-in translation, which gave them an important tool for understanding the picture.
The translation revealed errors
The new translation revealed errors on which the judges relied in the first sentence.
For example, the fact that Zadorov told investigators that at the time of the murder the deceased grabbed the knife, which was a clever detail for injuring her wrist.
The retrial clarified that the sentence was not stated and that it was a mistranslation.
Days will tell what the outcome of the trial will be.
But the affair that rocked Katzrin more than 15 years ago will likely continue to attract conspiracy theorists, detectives in their own eyes, and Facebook groups reporting news every morning about further findings and the eligibility of a murder defendant who spent 15 years of his life behind bars.
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