High Court: Men who found body of missing IDF soldier must get $10m reward

The High Court of Justice ruled Monday that the state must pay three men who found the remains of Majdi Halabi the $10 million reward it had previously offered for assistance in locating the missing IDF soldier.

The court ruled that the men should get the full amount originally promised by the state, which has been refusing to pay for nearly seven years.

In October 2012, Ibrahim Kozli, a Jewish National Fund worker, discovered a body in Nahal Hik in the Carmel Forest as he was clearing an area damaged in a fire. The remains were later identified as those of Majdi Halabi, a Druze soldier who had been missing since May 2005.

Halabi went missing while attempting to hitchhike back to his army base from his home in the Druze village of Daliyat al-Karmel.

However, the state refused to pay, saying that the reward had been intended for anyone who had concrete information about the missing soldier’s location and was not meant for someone who reported finding the body, as that was the duty of every citizen anyway.

Kozli and his two brothers sued the State of Israel, the Defense Ministry, and the Born To Be Free nonprofit organization, which had offered the reward on behalf of the state, for the multi-million dollar reward for locating the missing Halabi.

A lower court accepted the stance of the state, which also noted that Born to Be Free, which campaigned for the return of missing IDF soldiers from all conflicts since the 1980s, had shut down in the months before Halabi’s body was found due to cuts in the defense budget.

However, on Monday, the High Court ruled that the manner in which the body was found made no difference and that “so long as the finders passed on the information with the intention of claiming the reward, they have fulfilled its terms.”

The court also noted that failing to pay would lessen the effectiveness of future rewards offered by the state.

Halabi’s father Nazmi condemned the decision, calling it an “embarrassment,” and implied he believed that Kozli could have been connected to his son’s disappearance.

“We asked for just one thing — real, concrete information on what happened to our son,” he told Channel 12 after the decision. “The court, in one big embarrassment, instead of telling the state to go out and search and bring information to the family, they are going to give money to these people who were never questioned. Maybe they were part of this business with my son.”