NIS 17m compensation to go to man acquitted of grisly murder after 15 years in jail

The state will pay NIS 17 million (approximately $5 million) in compensation to Roman Zadorov, who was acquitted of the 2006 murder of a 13-year-old girl after he served 15 years in jail.

According to Hebrew media reports, the sum was agreed upon between prosecutors and Zadorov, and will come into force after it is approved by the Tel Aviv District Court in the coming days.

In a dramatic ruling in one of the most infamous murder cases in Israel in recent history, Zadorov was acquitted in March 2023 of the murder of Tair Rada in a school bathroom stall, overturning his conviction first issued in 2010.

The long drawn-out saga saw multiple appeals and a retrial that gripped the nation and inspired intense debate online and in the media as to the true identify of Rada’s killer.

The teenage girl was found murdered in 2006 in a bathroom stall in her Katzrin school in the Golan Heights, with slashes to her neck, stab wounds across her body, and severe blows to her head.

Zadorov, a Ukrainian national who had arrived in the country several years earlier and was working installing flooring in the school, was arrested shortly after the murder. Police said Zadorov had confessed to the killing, but a day later his defense attorney claimed that the confession was coerced and incorrect.

In 2010, nearly four years after he was arrested, the Nazareth District Court convicted Zadorov and sentenced him to life in prison. The conviction was twice upheld by the Supreme Court following separate appeals, though Rada’s family publicly expressed doubt that Zadorov had killed her.

His lawyers, along with thousands of vocal members of the public, insisted that Zadorov was framed for an act he did not commit and that the real murderer was a woman named Ola Kravchenko, whose boyfriend at the time, Adir Habani, said years later that she’d confessed the murder to him.

Following a DNA analysis by investigators, the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute announced in 2018 that a hair found on Rada’s body did not belong to Zadorov, but instead could match Habani (among thousands of possible matches), reigniting speculation over the killing.

In 2021, the Supreme Court ordered a retrial of Zadorov, and he was freed to house arrest after 15 years behind bars. Two years later, the court acquitted Zadorov of the killing in a 2-1 ruling.

Judges Asher Kula wrote at the time that there was “substantial fear that Zadorov’s confession was a false confession.” He also criticized the state prosecutors, saying they had “failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that his confession matches the findings at the scene. He is not a sadist or a pedophile and isn’t someone prone to uncontrolled violent outbursts.”

Writing in the minority opinion, Judge Tammar Nissim Shai Zadorov averred that Zadorov “is guilty beyond any reasonable doubt,” and that “his confession is detailed and rich, and wasn’t given out of fear.”

Upon hearing that he had been exonerated, Zadorov in 2023 burst into tears and later said: “The truth triumphed. I am happy. I was confined to my home; now I will take my children for a stroll.”