Last update - 00:00 23/03/2007
IDF officers strike plea bargain in death of elite commando
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent
A special military tribunal accepted a plea bargain on Thursday in a case involving the death of a member of an elite undercover unit who died of dehydration during a training exercise five years ago.
Five officers were convicted of negligence in the death of Duvdevan sergeant Roi Dror and sentenced to probation. The highest ranking officer convicted, Nadav Padan, commander of the officer training school, will be ineligible for promotion for two years. Two others were demoted to the rank of sergeant.
Dror died in June 2002 during a navigation exercise in hot weather on Mount Arbel, near Lake Kinneret. The investigation uncovered serious deficiencies in the exercise and in the performance of commanders.
The court differentiated between the levels of negligence - that of Padan and his deputy, who were not on site; and that of the three more junior officers who were present at the exercise, and whose negligence the court considered more serious. Two of them were stripped of their officer rank. The decision that Padan will be ineligible for promotion for two years is mostly a symbolic gesture. Padan said Thursday that in light of the circumstances he will cut short his service as commander of the officer school instead of leaving the job in the summer as planned. This summer Padan will become the ground forces military attaché to Washington.
Padan's lawyer expressed satisfaction with the verdict. Attorney Ron Gazit told Haaretz that the judges took into consideration the fact that Padan had been called in to command the unit just a few months prior to Dror's death, after the unit's commander was killed in an operation in the territories.