A man suspected of killing his former partner Sapir Nachum, whose body was found 11 days after he went missing, failed a polygraph test when asked about his death, a court heard on Sunday.
During a hearing, the Court of Acre Magistrates’ Court was told that Wala Khalilah failed a lie detector test during the investigation into the murder of Nachum, a 24-year-old mother of two children.
“we are checking [Khalilah’s] version and it’s wrong. As far as the most important things are concerned, he claims that he does not remember. He has a clear motive for murder,” investigators told the court.
The polygraph test, discredited by most Western countries as junk science, is still widely used in Israeli criminal investigations.
Judge Ziad Saleh said little progress had been made in the investigation, but there was enough evidence to extend Khalilah’s custody until Thursday.
Khalila, the father of Nachum’s two young children, has already been arrested on charges of violent crimes and sabotage. Nachum’s relatives told Israeli media that he had previously spent several years in prison.
Ahead of Sunday’s hearing, Khalila, who has repeatedly declared his innocence, claimed he was arrested “only because of TikTok videos”.
Khalila was known to the public from Tiktok, he used to upload videos of his vandalism regularly. He recently got a . But was arrested after entering the kibbutz Kiefer Masarik with a group of friends horse and carriage and causing disturbance, An incident that was filmed and posted on a social media app.
Nachum was last seen in person when she left her home on Herzl Street in Acre on June 2 with her 2-year-old daughter, who she had dropped off at daycare.
He was then seen in security footage entering one of Khalila’s cars. Nachum is said to have been involved in a financial dispute with his former partner.
Police uncovered his body 11 days after it was last seen – about 25 kilometers south of Acre – near the Bedouin village of Ibtin.
Nachum is survived by her 2-year-old daughter and an 8-month-old child.
Dozens of protesters protested violence against women outside the home of Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on Saturday evening. Lapid is expected to become prime minister in the coming days with a possible dissolution of the Knesset, and he stepped outside to speak to protesters.
Women’s groups are concerned that the expected expansion of the Knesset will delay a series of measures agreed by the government aimed at protecting women from violence.
The recent protests were followed by the killing of four women in a span of seven days. Protesters carried signs depicting the faces of women killed over the years, including Nachum.
according to a report good Published in January by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel reported 16 cases of murder of women by a relative or partner throughout 2021 and 21 in 2020.