A year without a trace: Knesset panel reviews disappearance of Haymanut Kasau, aged 9

The Knesset National Security Committee held a meeting Tuesday dedicated to the disappearance of Ethiopian-Israeli girl Haymanut Kasau, a year after she vanished near her home without a trace.

Her parents were at the meeting where they displayed a photo of their daughter who was nine at the time she went missing from an absorption center for new immigrants in the northern city of Safed.

MKs grilled police representatives including why the case has not been categorized as a kidnapping, instead continuing to list her as missing, a measure that Kasau’s father, Tesfai Kasau, has urged be taken.

However, Chief Superintendent Tomer Pinchi insisted that a great effort was made to find the girl, using all technological means available, including cooperation with the Israel Defense Forces, the committee said in a statement about the meeting.

Pinchi asserted that there was no further action that could have been taken even if the case had been classified as a kidnapping.

He also said that “all testimonies were checked and there is no evidence that she was kidnapped.”

“We believe that the police doesn’t have the ability to deal with this case,” Tesfai Kasau said and urged establishing a new entity with “the tools to solve this problem.”

“It is time to change her status from missing to kidnapped,” Kasau said. “She is alive as long as no one says otherwise.”

He related how the disappearance has impacted the family, with their younger daughters afraid to go to the bathroom.

“It has disrupted our entire lives and we can’t go on without her,” Kasau said.

Committee chair MK Boaz Bismuth lamented that a year after the disappearance, “there is nothing to go on.”

“A year of uncertainty, a year of great pain to the family. The country needs to do everything in order to track down Haymanut,” he said.

MK Merav Ben Ami urged police to change “the conception” of the case and define it as a kidnapping.

“The police did not do everything that should have been done at the start in order to find Haymanut,” she charged.

Some lawmakers speculated that the case has dropped from the public mind because Haymanut is from a minority group, and urged that it remain spotlighted.

MK Pnina Tamano-Shata, an Ethiopian-Israel lawmaker said, “From a social perspective, it must be said honestly, it is impossible for a nine-year-old girl to disappear and not be in the public discourse.”

“If this were an Israeli girl and not of Ethiopian origin, there would have been a much bigger outcry,” said MK Naor Shiri.

“It is important to keep this in the headlines so that the whole country knows that she is missing and that her family is struggling,” asserted MK Semion Moshiashvili.

Police are reportedly considering sending a team of investigators to Ethiopia to look into the disappearance of Haymanut, according to a Channel 13 documentary about the case that is to be aired on Wednesday.

According to a preview aired earlier this month, the documentary includes testimony from a girl — identified only by her first initial Aleph — who was with Kasau just minutes before her disappearance on February 25, 2024.

Aleph reported that two people were sitting near the children on a green bench, whispering to each other, as she and Haymanut played on a swing set, and that the two people disappeared at the same time that Kasau did.

Last June, at a meeting of the Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption, and Diaspora Affairs, Tesfai Kasau accused the government of not doing enough to find his daughter.

“How can it be that they’re not doing everything in their power to investigate and find out where she is?” Kasau asked at the time, speaking Amharic via a translator.

Haymanut was last seen in security footage at 7:45 p.m. on February 25, 2024, handing out municipal election leaflets outside the Jewish Agency absorption center, where she has lived for the past three years since immigrating with her family from Ethiopia.

According to a description, Haymanut stands at 1.20 meters (3’11”) and is slim with dark hair and dark eyes. At the time of her disappearance, she was wearing pink pants, a black skirt and a white shirt at the time of her disappearance.

A report by the Knesset Information and Research Center on disappearances reported to the police found that each year the police receive 4,000-5,000 notifications of missing people, the vast majority of whom are soon located, the National Security Committee said in its statement.

Less than one percent are not found even after a prolonged period. In June 2014, police were aware of 593 missing people, most of whom had vanished for a prolonged period, of whom 10% were minors when their disappearance was reported to the police.