Last update - 00:00 27/11/2006
Police chief Karadi concedes failures in Benny Sela's escort
By Roni Singer-Heruti and Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondents
Police Commissioner Moshe Karadi said he took responsibility for the conduct of the police escorting Benny Sela and concedes "operational failures in the way in which Benny Sela was escorted by the police."
Benny Sela, a convicted serial rapist serving a 35-year sentence, escaped from police custody Friday morning.
Karadi told Haaretz on Sunday that Sela should have been escorted "by other standards entirely."
Police say they take responsibility only for the part the police played in the affair, i.e., from the moment Sela was handed over to the two police escorts after he exited the Nitzan Prison.
The two police escorts, whom Tel Aviv district commander Major General David Tzur decided to transfer to another unit, said they had handcuffed the prisoner. Although the police say the testimony of the escorts is credible, many within the police doubt their contention.
The police team investigating Sela's escape says he acted alone, and his flight was not planned much ahead of time. "Sela was not supposed to have come to the Labor Court or to any other court on Friday. The fact that he was taken is due to an error, and apparently he had no accomplices in the act," Karadi said Sunday at an evaluation meeting in Tel Aviv.
The initial investigation into the circumstances under which Sela left the prison began as soon as he was found to have fled Friday morning. At that time it became clear that the Prison Service had received a document from the Labor Court summoning Sela to a hearing on Friday morning at 7:30 A.M.
Sources in the police expressed their surprise at the fact that no one in the Prison Service thought it out of the ordinary that Sela was invited for a hearing on Friday morning, when no Labor Court hearings take place.
A special investigative team was formed in the central unit of the Tel Aviv district police to follow the trail of the summons to the non-existent hearing. They considered the possibility of an inside job, and the Labor Court on Schocken Street in Tel Aviv was opened especially on Friday night so police could look at Sela's file, which involved a suit he brought against his employer prior to his arrest.
They also went to the home of the court clerk who had typed Sela's summons to question her. Eventually, it was realized that instead of ordering that his file be sent to the judge, the order had come through to bring Sela himself to court. The clerk said she had also made a mistake in the date, and realized it right after she typed it.
The Prison Service did its best on Sunday to disprove the theory that Sela had been assisted from within its ranks. The announcement by the Courts Administration that it took responsibility for the error put to rest the rumors that someone in the Prison Service had issued a fictitious summons. The police, who first thought Sela had planned his getaway and that a car was even waiting for him, now say he took advantage of an opportunity to flee.
The Prison Service did say that a Friday court date should not have rung warning bells, since last January there had been 731 summonses issued for Fridays.