After a month on the run, Negev father suspected of murdering young daughters arrested

Police arrest resident of Beduin village of al-Fura in a riverbed by the Dead Sea; suspected of strangling daughters.

By BEN HARTMAN
Stormy weather at the Dead Sea 390 (photo credit: Reuters/Ronen Zvulon)
Stormy weather at the Dead Sea 390
(photo credit: Reuters/Ronen Zvulon)
After fleeing police and the Shin Bet for over a month a Negev man wanted for murdering his two young daughters was found last week, the Southern District reported Sunday.
The father, 40-year-old Ali Amtirat, was found hiding on the roof of an abandoned building in a remote area of the Negev near the Dead Sea last Tuesday, police reported. Amtirat was exhausted, without food, water or a cell phone, and was wearing the same clothes he was seen in last when he fled the village of al-Fura in late May, police said.
Police arrived after receiving a tip that Amtirat was in the area.
The police who took part in the raid included officers from the MAGEN anti-smuggling and border security unit, who specialize in desert tracking, surveillance and camouflage.
Reports that Amtirat was hiding in the Palestinian territories had been ruled out early in the search after they were followed up by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency).
Amtirat, from the Beduin village of al-Fura, is suspected of strangling the two girls, Asinad and Rimas, aged three and five on May 21. The murders came only a day after the man’s exwife, Abir Amtirat, a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, filed a complaint with Arad Police, stating that the father posed a clear and present danger to the lives of their children.
Police negligence in fielding the complaint led Insp.-Gen.
Yochanan Danino to order the dismissal of the commander of the Arad Police and two deputies.
On Sunday, Southern District Commander Yoram Halevy described the “nerve-wracking, around the clock” hunt for the father as “an unusual, extraordinarily difficult manhunt after a dangerous suspect hiding in open fields, caves and ravines.”
Halevy added that the arrest is not cause for celebration, and that police must still work quietly and determinedly in a “professionally modest” way to assemble evidence for an indictment.