Last update - 00:00 26/02/2007
Student says saw unknown youth at school before Rada murder
By Nir Hasson and Eli Ashkenazi, Haaretz Correspondents
An 11th-grade student at the Katzrin school where 13-year-old Tair Rada was killed in December has told police he saw a youth he did not recognize near the murder scene about half an hour before Rada's death.
Such evidence, said Shira Meroz, one of the Rada family's attorneys, indicates that the police have neglected major avenues of investigation.
Police have said they view Roman Zadorov, a construction worker who was working at the Golan Heights school at the time of the murder, as their prime suspect. Zadorov, who was arrested in December, has confessed to the murder and reenacted the crime, but is pleading not guilty.
"The police had many avenues of investigation, but from the moment Zadorov confessed, they abandoned everything," said Meroz, who, along with Moshe Meroz, is representing the Rada family.
The Rada family lawyers have been raising serious questions about Zadorov's role in the murder. Meroz said the 11th-grade student was one of several students who saw an unidentified youth at the school on the day of Rada's death. He said he saw someone who looked to be between 17 and 19 on the same floor of the school as the bathroom where Rada's body was found. He described the youth as thin, with short hair and light skin, and said another student who was with him at the time also failed to recognize the youth.
"The student's testimony places that person on the floor where the murder took place a short time before the murder," Meroz said. "It's not a coincidence, and we are asking the police to reopen the investigation before it's too late. It is reasonable to assume that there is a murderer at large."
Ronit Mualem, the police spokeswoman for the Galilee District, refused to comment "due to the concern for obstruction of the legal proceedings."
A police official expressed anger Sunday over reports indicating that Zadorov may not be the guilty party.
"These reports are sabotaging the trial," he said.
The Rada family argues that there are other possibilities regarding the murderer's identity that have also not been fully investigated. For instance, the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported Sunday that friends of Rada said she had been threatened by an 18-year-old boy named Avi, from Tiberias, who was apparently interested in her and was sending text messages to her cell phone. The police did find a relative of Rada's from Tiberias named Avi, but found that there was no connection between him and the murder, Mualem said.
Meroz, however, insisted that the police should have looked for another Avi who might have been connected to the murder.