Police nab father suspected of slaying 2 daughters

Police on Sunday announced that they arrested the man suspected of murdering his two young daughters in May, after a manhunt of over a month.

Ali Amtirat was found last Tuesday after having evaded police since 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. The little girls’ bodies were discovered with signs of violence.

Investigators said Amtirat had been living in open fields and caves in the Negev near the Dead Sea. He is denying any involvement in the murders, according to the police.

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 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’aleh 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 Ministry of Public Security, 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, 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 police conduct after they failed to act on the mother’s.

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

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