No charges over Zygier death

Israel’s prison service and its staff won’t face charges for the death of Ben Zygier, state prosecutors have decided.

There had been some expectation that legal action may be instigated, given that a judge’s report last year suggested that there was negligence in the jail where Zygier died. She pointed to shortcomings in the supervision of the prisoner.

However, the State Attorney Moshe Lador wrote in a report released this week that “it would not be possible to determine with the level of certainty required for criminal proceedings that Israel Prison Service (IPS) officials and others involved in the supervision of the deceased should have foreseen his suicide.”

Politicians who have called for greater transparency on the Zygier case opposed the decision. Labour Knesset member Nachman Shai, who has asked Israel’s State Comptroller to investigate the case, told The AJN: “I think it was the wrong decision.” He added that there must be a “very good reason” not to take legal action against the IPS and its employees, and he is unconvinced that such a reason exists.

Zygier, an Australian immigrant to Israel who is believed to have worked for Mossad, committed suicide in December 2010.

The State Attorney’s report admitted “defects” in the supervision of Zygier. These included a technical problem that stopped a camera from transmitting footage from the cell for a time, and there was a period when a control station was left unattended.

But the report concluded that even the best monitoring wouldn’t have saved Zygier, and “it is doubtful whether a causal link exists between the absence of strict supervision and the result.”

According to the report, this is because recommended visual monitoring was half-hourly, but he would have had time to kill himself between two half-hourly checks. And despite attempting suicide in the past, evidence didn’t suggest that Zygier was at the kind of severe risk of suicide that would have necessitated monitoring more than twice an hour.

The State Attorney’s report brought to light previously unknown details about the day that Zygier committed suicide. His wife visited and the two had a highly emotional conversation, at the end of which she passed him a note which was torn up by a prison guard. Zygier became furious and his wife returned to talk to him, exiting in tears and leaving him distraught.

After she left the cell, she was in tears, the document said, adding that it appeared that during the meeting Zygier had received a message that upset him. The State Attorney, however, maintains that as prison officials didn’t know what was discussed, they didn’t err in sticking to the normal guidelines for supervising Zygier.

NATHAN JEFFAY