Father charged with 2013 murder of 2 young daughters

The Beersheba District Court on Monday found a man from southern Israel guilty of murdering his two young daughters in May 2013.

The bodies of Asinad, 4, and Rimas, 2, were found in their beds at their family home in the Bedouin village of al-Fora’a, showing signs of violence.

Their father, Ali Amtirat, has consistently denied the allegations against him.

On Monday, the court charged Amtirat with double homicide by strangulation. He will be sentenced at a later date.

The gruesome case gained national notoriety for police failure and the dismissal of senior police figures at the Arad station after it was revealed that the girls’ mother, Abir Dandis, filed a complaint there against Amtirat just one day before the murders. The mother had also filed at least five complaints against her husband at the Ma’ale Adumim police station, stating she feared for her and her daughters’ safety.

Dandis has filed a civil suit of some NIS 5 million ($1.4 million) against the police, the Public Security Ministry, and the Arad station for what she called a “lack of care, an unwillingness to listen, arrogance, incivility and a lack of readiness to act to protect citizens.”

In May 2013, newly departed Israel Police chief Yohanan Danino dismissed Arad police station commander Yoni Zeitek, after an investigation into the murder of the girls near the southern city revealed “low standards” of conduct by police, who failed to act on the mother’s complaint.

In addition, Danino dismissed the station’s sub-commander and head of investigations. He also reprimanded other officers involved in the case, including the investigator who had heard testimony from the girls’ mother.

In May 2013, three of Amtirat’s siblings were arrested for kidnapping the mother’s brother and blackmailing her into returning the girls, after she had fled with them in an attempt to protect them.