Roman Zadorov, who was convicted in the 2006 murder of 13-year-old Tair Rada, was acquitted on Thursday in what appears to be the end of an unprecedented legal drama in Israel.
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Rada was murdered in a bathroom stall at her school in Katzrin, the largest Jewish town in the Golan Heights, where Zadorov was working as a janitor. The murder case has received extensive media coverage, due to the brutal way in which Rada was murdered and the continuing claims that Zadorov is not the one who killed her. Despite his conviction, some believe he confessed under duress and that the real murderer may still be on the loose. In 2021, a retrial was announced some 11 years after his conviction.
The 2-1 decision to vacate the conviction on Thursday was not based on specific exculpatory evidence but due to lingering questions over whether his confession was genuine and other matters that cast some doubt over the nature of the investigation and findings, including the controversial use of an undercover detective to have him speak about the case while in custody. "The confession, which was supposedly authentic, was nothing more than a hollow declaration," one judge wrote in the majority opinion. "The vast majority of the evidence turned out to be lacking any substantive significance," the judge continued. The ruling also noted that his conduct was not commensurate with that of a "sophisticated" murder and that the crime scene did not match the depiction of the charges against him.
For over a decade, Zadorov had argued that he was innocent of the murder, the investigation of which has been panned for a slew of forensic blunders.
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