"We will make sure she pays for this": Eldar Dayan's family refuses to stay silent
Eldar Dayan was laid to rest on Tuesday, and his family is still struggling to process his death. Family members are furious at a police investigator who accompanied the case, claiming she told them there was a "98% chance he is alive," and declare: "We will make sure she pays."
The extended family of the late Eldar Dayan is furious at the police, the media, and everyone who played a part in the disappearance of the 23-year-old, who was laid to rest last Tuesday in Eilat. "They made him out to be a criminal," one of the aunts said angrily. "Without mercy, they made him a villain. They notified the family by phone to come identify him. Where is the sensitivity? Is that how you tell a family that their son has died?"
"They murdered him in the media," his grandmother Mali fumed. "They killed him." In the eulogies at the funeral, speakers sought to refute the image in which he was portrayed and present a true, different picture: "You were not a criminal. You were our beloved child, with the rolling laugh that is impossible to forget," eulogized Efrat, his cousin. "There is pain and there is a lot of anger at the cruelty with which they took your life and your plans. Everything they said about you did not reflect at all who you are."
One of the figures in the affair whom the family members are angry at is a police investigator who was in contact with them throughout the recent period: "She told us there is a 98% chance he is alive. That they are close to finding him and arresting him," one of the aunts claimed. "Even before they reached him and asked him something or even spoke to him, they turned him into a criminal. But we will make sure she pays for this. We have recordings of her, how she spoke and what she told us."
The deceased's family claims that Eldar's body was not whole when they found him: "He was in the field for a long time. A long time during which they probably harmed him." They also said that two teeth were missing from his mouth and that his identification was made possible by an examination of the jaw, but this detail does not calm them: "This police, they made him what he is not. They made him a criminal but he is far from being one."
Israel Police response: "The Israel Police shares in the heavy grief of the Dayan family. The police will continue to act with determination and professionalism to reach the truth and bring all those involved to justice."
As recalled, on Wednesday, new details about the investigation were revealed during a court hearing in which the police requested to extend the detention of the two suspects involved in the affair, Omri Peretz and Maxim Barberman. During the discussion, the possibility was raised that Dayan's remains were not at the location where they were finally found the entire time.
It also emerged that the police conducted several searches in the area before finding the remains, and that a shovel was found near the scene on which no DNA samples were found, but no area that appeared to have been dug was located.
Both were interrogated by the police and provided the investigators with a detailed version of the sequence of events - from the moment of the meeting in the park in the area between Hod HaSharon and Kfar Saba until the moment when, according to them, they lost contact with Dayan. They claimed that during a fight that developed at the scene, Dayan was severely beaten by members of another group. According to them, they continued together with him to the Paz gas station complex in the Yarkon junction area. Peretz claimed in his interrogation that Dayan was exhausted, and that he entered the convenience store and bought him a bottle of water.
After that, according to their version, they noticed a police patrol car passing by in the area and fled together with Dayan towards the open field, where they hid for about half an hour. The investigators have footage showing the three after they left the convenience store and headed towards the field.
