The improper promotion of the intelligence coordinator – and the attempted rendering after death

We will return to January 2019. Niv, who is in the middle of a course for officers, is ready for interrogation by the IDF. In the interrogation room, he meets two intelligence coordinators who pressured him, threatened and manipulated him to cooperate and incriminate his close friends for using grass. At the end of a heavy pressure campaign, he breaks down – and names two soldiers.

But an hour and a half after leaving the interrogation, he regrets and calls one of the intelligence centers to announce that he is back and is not willing to cooperate with them, and even asks to meet a police officer. “I cry here for another second, I can not,” says Niv. What I said and I am willing to bear the consequences. “The coordinator replies that everything is fine and he is released, but Niv says:” I want to hop on a bus. “The recordings of the conversations were recently broadcast on the” Fact “program.

The coordinator who spoke with Niv writes to the older coordinator that he is not willing to be a source and even writes that Niv “is considering suicide.” The other coordinator replies with an inconceivable answer: “Everything is fine, let him fuck.” The next day, in his great distress, Niv calls the intelligence coordinator again and asks, “I hope you stop using these methods.” This time, too, the coordinators do not report to anyone. At night, Niv’s commanders notice at the base that he has disappeared – and begin searching for him. Only at 10:30 a.m. is his body near the base.

This is where the greatest command failure of all begins, which will only get more complicated: First, the coordinators ignore Niv’s cries for help. They did not feel the need to report to their commander, as required, the unusual phone calls with the source they had recruited, a soldier carrying a weapon in distress, but only corresponded between them. This is what happened in real time, and this is what happened the next evening – during the search for him.

We now reveal for the first time that the same intelligence coordinator who activated Niv, pressured him in an investigation and then did not report his cry for help, was promoted to a senior position even before the suicide: command of the intelligence team. The promotion was carried out even though the coordinator did not pass the required certifications and did not complete the initiation and overlap procedure. This fact was revealed in the command investigation conducted by the commander of the southern region in the MPC, but has not been published so far.

And here’s another discovery, even more worrying: three weeks after Niv’s suicide, the coordinator was sent to pass the certification test – to retrospectively train his promotion. The very fact that he was sent to the test by his commander, Major C, raises difficult questions. Has anyone been urgently “retroactively” laundered his promotion, which an internal investigation by the MPC ruled was done illegally? And if that was not enough – it turns out that the same coordinator failed the certification test in question. What is it like? A person on the road without a driver’s license Another person to death, and three weeks after the fatal accident was sent for a test – but did not pass.

The MPCF report states: “The intelligence coordinator received command of the intelligence team even though he did not complete a professional mentoring and overlap procedure. “Only three weeks after the unfortunate incident – and he received a failed grade.”

That is: The report states that not only was the coordinator who pressured Niv unsuitable for the job and did not undergo the training properly, his commander Major C. considered him worthy of promotion even after Niv’s suicide – and sent him to tests, which he did not pass.

Niv’s parents, Michal and Eran, claim throughout that the behavior of the coordinators was outrageous and must be examined in all criminal and legal tools. In their view, and quite rightly so for them, the indictment filed against the two coordinators attributes to them too minor offenses: false information, non-compliance with an order and inappropriate conduct. Therefore, the parents petitioned the High Court demanding that the charges for causing death by negligence be aggravated, and that the criminal proceedings against the commander of the Beer Sheva MPC, Major C, be exhausted.

The parents submitted to the court materials that back up their demand, including additional testimony, which puts Major C in a problematic light. Shortly before the disaster, Major C was summoned for a conversation with Niv’s battalion commander. The battalion commander claims that he warned Major C. from activating agents and recruiting sources at his base, following the case of another soldier who complained about the pressure exerted on him. He raised a red flag. Only following the parents’ petition, and the information they provided, did the military prosecutor’s office recall to complete an investigation. The outgoing head of the ACA, Moti Almoz, ousted C from the IDF, depriving him of command positions and delaying his promotion by six years.

In light of the revelations we have made here: sending the coordinator for a post-suicide promotion test, the battalion commander’s warning and the fact that Major C did not take actions that could have prevented the disaster, Almoz’s and the chief of staff’s decision seems logical and reasonable.

But Major G. wasted no time. He hurried to the district court, sitting as an administrative court, to cancel his dismissal. This is an unusual action, which takes the command procedure outside the IDF to the civil justice system. The military prosecutor’s office, which as stated preferred the mitigating approach all the way, it is not clear for what reason, did not apply to the district court and asked to stop the procedure until the new facts became clear. She contented herself with requesting two extensions of 60 days each. Four months to interrogate three people.

The bereaved parents have asked to inform District Judge Erna Levy that the criminal investigation against G. is still ongoing. The IDF did not object to their presence in the courtroom, even though the hearing was closed, but the judge vehemently refused. She ruled that the parents would not attend the hearing at all and removed them from her courtroom at the beginning. Later, Eran and Michal asked to review the case in court. , But only after the procedure was over and she published her ruling.

In an excited letter sent to her, the parents wrote: “We are shocked that Major C denies the prominent and blatant failures that occurred in his conduct as commander. A murky, cruel commanding spirit, devoid of ethical and professional boundaries or human compassion – which is meant to trample on both IDF and IDF orders. It was this evil and terrible commanding spirit that pushed our eldest son to his death. We request that the Honorable Court not charge criminal and irresponsible conduct in its decision. “Major C’s serious failures simply do not allow him to be satisfied with less than the disciplinary punishment imposed on him.”

The judge ignored the letter and the details brought by the parents about the battalion commander’s warning to Major C. The MPCF’s report regarding the improper promotion of the intelligence coordinator, which we revealed here, was also presented to her. However, Judge Levy ruled in favor of the officer – even though she knew that the criminal proceedings in his case were still ongoing.

“There is no limit to the trampling of values ​​such as human dignity, morality and justice,” say the pain of Niv, Michal and Eran’s parents. “As if it was not enough that the unrestrained power, arrogance, lack of listening to the dialect and the criminal silence of those coordinators and their commander took his life, now we parents have to deal with similar conduct ‘in the name of the law’? Whoever asks for public trust “Out of a discussion that dealt with our son, perhaps because she refused to look at us. And what about commanders’ responsibility if the death of a soldier is sentenced in an ‘administrative’ court? His death is also ‘administrative’?”

It is clear to all that it is unlikely that a civil judge will make a decision concerning the command plane while the question of the officer’s criminal responsibility for what is happening under his command and the disaster that has occurred is still being investigated.

Two years and a month after an IDF fighter entered an IDF interrogation room and two days later ended his life, this painful affair has not yet been fully clarified. The parents struggle to find out the truth and bring to justice those who have taken responsibility for their son’s life, meanwhile discovering how a civil justice system closes its doors to them. The IDF owes them, and every parent of every soldier, proper answers.