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Yitzhak Rabin's bloodied undershirt. Three holes found. (From "Case Not Closed," Channel 2)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners November 4, 2005 |
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| Hiss points to just two bullets inside (From "Case Not Closed," Channel 2) |
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Part One in a Series. Click here for Parts 2, and 3, and 4.
A documentary screened on Israel's Channel Two to mark the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin presented shocking evidence that a third bullet pierced the shirt and undershirt of the Prime Minister after his jacket had been removed , indicating that one of the bullets which killed him was fired from the front. The ballistic and forensic evidence suggest strongly that someone other than Yigal Amir fired at least one shot, and possibly all of them.
Naftali Glicksberg, director of the film -- "Case Not Closed? -- focused on a single question: what could account for the matching holes in the lower front of the bloodstained shirt and undershirt of the murdered Prime Minister, preserved in the national archives and apparently never removed or investigated since the murder on the night of November 4, 1995?
There were two other bullet holes that pierced Rabin's jacket, shirt and undershirt higher on his body, from the back. Those have long been reported. But no one until now no one -- except for a group of private investigators who have long been dismissed as beyond-the-pale conspiracy theorists -- has publicly raised the possibility of a third bullet which entered from the front of Rabin's body -- after his jacket had been removed.
The evidence, apparently, has been part of the public record all the time. Shimon Shravit, appointed to head the police investigation, did note in his report the existence of the holes, but it was never further pursued, not by the Shabak, Israel's internal security service, nor by the official investigating commission led by Justice Meir Shamgar, and not by the mainstream media until now, which for the first time raised the possibility -- in light of the documentary evidence presented tonight -- that Yigal Amir may not have been the lone gunman.
Particularly problematic in the documentary were the interviews with Yehuda Hiss, Israel's leading pathologist, who performed the autopsy. Although he noted a hole in the lower front of Rabin's shirt, he did not note the matching hole in the undershirt. There was no report in the autopsy about signs on the lower front of Rabin's body. And although he said Hiss videotaped the autopsy, he said that the videotape was recycled and no photographic evidence of Rabin's body after death remained to prove or disprove whether in fact there was a third wound.
Hiss, in the documentary, abashedly referred to the commitment to secrecy he was compelled to sign just after the autopsy of Rabin, and often stumbled, stuttered and avoided looking at the camera or interviewer when asked about the contradictions in his report and other strange inconsistencies in his activities on the night of the murder and subsequently.
However, the Health Minister at the time, Ephraim Sneh, announced during the night of the murder that Rabin was hit by three bullets, and identified their precise locations: the chest, the spinal cord, and the stomach. Sneh said tonight that he was relying on the report of Dr. Gabi Barabash, senior physician at Ichilov Hospital, where Rabin was taken and died.
This evidence was never taken into account in subsequent reports, which became part of the official record claiming that Rabin was hit only twice, from the back. It was officially claimed that a third bullet shot, hit and wounded bodyguard Yoram Rubin.
Background: Amir's prosecutor and police inspector questions shots
Last Sunday morning attorney Penina Guy, the prosecutor in Amir's trial in early 1996, acknowledged that some aspects of the murder remain unclear to her: "It's still a mystery to me how he managed to shoot three bullets and at the same time even approach Rabin, and, according to the ballistic evidence, actually touch Rabin's jacket for the third bullet".
Larissa Trimbobler said this week that here husband was surprised to hear that the shooter touched Rabin's jacket. "Yigal has always said that this is not true", she told Arutz-7 today. "He did not approach Rabin; rather, Rabin got further and further away from him. Yigal also says that he certainly never touched Rabin or his jacket".
In addition, two police reports filed days after the assassination show that no gunpowder nor metal residues were found on Amir's hands when he was tested very shortly after the shots were fired. Real bullets invariably leave a residue. Blanks do not.
Moreover, Chief Lieutenant Baruch Gladstein of Israel Police's Materials and Fibers Laboratory tested the clothing of Rabin and bodyguard Yoram Rubin to determine the range of the shots. He testified at Amir's trial that one of the shots which killed Rabin was fired from point-blank range and was "characterized by a massed abundance of gunpowder, a large quantity of lead and a 6-centimeter tear [in Rabin's jacket]", Gladstein said, "...all the characteristics of a point blank shot".
Gladstein emphasized in his testimony that the gun muzzle was placed on Rabin's body: "Even if the shot is from a centimeter, two or three you won't see the tearing and abundance of gunpowder. These are evident only from point blank shots".
In the Kempler video documenting the Rabin assassination (time-stamp 7:40), Amir is not seen firing at point blank range. Amir, cross-examining Gladstein, said: "According to your testimony, I placed the gun right on his back...We need a new expert because I didn't shoot from point blank range."
Channel Two program, security men dismiss idea of conspiracy
Oshrat Kotler, moderator of a discussion program which followed the screening of "Case Not Closed?," took pains at the outset to insist that there was no doubt that Yigal Amir was guilt, and that Amir fired the shots that killed Yitzhak Rabin. Throughout the discussion, she and other guests insisted that no one was adopting conspiracy theories. The film-maker Naftali Glicksberg also insisted that he had no doubt of Amir's guilt.
Members of the Shin Bet were given ample opportunity to explain that there was no cover-up and many explanation for the appearance of holes in Rabin's shirt and undershirt, among the explanations the idea that a cigarette burn was responsible for the holes, a viewpoint support by a British forensics expert interviewed on the program.
Also in Friday papers were calls by the heads of the security details of both the Shin Bet and the Israeli police for a new inquiry into what was called "the intelligence and security failures" which led to Rabin's death. But these men, too, had no doubt that Yigal Amir was the killer and that there was no conspiracy, just unanswered questions.
However, even journalist Tom Segev of Haaretz, known for his left-wing views, appears troubled by the mounting evidence of a conspiracy. "The fact that an Israeli television company is ready to invest money in a project like this is interesting in itself, and for a moment would seem to redeem the conspiracy theory from the eccentricities of the Internet and vest it with legitimate respectability."
Segev also notes the apparent confusion and contradictions of the chief medical examiner. "Dr. Hiss initially replied through his institute's spokesperson: 'This is arrant nonsense. He never wrote that there is a perforation on the front side of the shirt.' At the same time, he promised to go back and look at the report again. It turns out that his memory misled him. In his report he did in fact note the perforation on the front side of the shirt. He did not do so because he thought it was a perforation caused by a bullet, and in fact he is certain that it was not. He noted the perforation because he saw it, because that is how he works, always careful to be accurate, Hiss said."
"If there is a hole in the undershirt today, it was not there when he examined the body,' Hiss told me. 'What is important is that only two wounds were found in Rabin's body, and two bullets, and there is no wound in the front. That is also seen in the x-rays.'" But Segev notes that those photographs are mysteriously missing, which, he said, "brings us back to the question of why there is still classified material in this affair. As long as such material exists, it cannot be ruled out that someone is concealing the truth."
Segev, too, raises other issues that have nothing to do with the third frontal bullet. "Not all the questions have answers, and here is another key element that nourishes conspiracy theories: People are not willing to accept mysteries without a solution. Who, if at all, shouted 'Srak, srak' ('blank, blank'), and why? How did it happen that the photographer Rony Kempler, who filmed the murder with a video camera, focused precisely on Yigal Amir minutes before he committed the murder? The film can be seen on Internet sites; it appears to be edited. Who edited it? One way or the other, it does not make it possible to ascertain definitely what actually happened there. In the short film that is screened for visitors to the Rabin Center, three shots are heard clearly; in the original film the shots are not heard clearly. Here is a basis for a new allegation of 'evidence tampering.' There are other questions, too." Segev ends by suggesting that someone do a research study.
[to be continued]
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