Some 15 years after he was arrested, convicted and sent to life in prison for the 2006 murder of the girl Tair Rada at a school in Katzrin, Roman Zadorov was released to house arrest on Thursday afternoon.
The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal filed by the State Attorney's Office and ordered the release of Roman Zadorov to house arrest on Thursday morning.
Zadorov exited the prison and met his 15-year-old son, who did not get a chance to know his father outside of prison walls, his wife Olga, Olga's mother, at whose house where Zadorov will be held, and his lawyer Yarom Halevy.
"There is only one truth, everything will be OK," Zadorov said to the large group of reporters gathered outside of the prison.
He arrived in Katzrin at 9:30 PM.
"I am very emotional, I am happy. I did not believe I will leave [prison], but it happened," he said upon arrival to Kan reporter Chen Biyar.
"I will continue to prove that I am innocent, until the very end," he added.
Zadorov was expected to be released at 16:00, but his release was delayed due to bureaucratic issues regarding the restrictions pertaining to his release.
Judge Alex Stein noted three cumulative conditions for house arrest, including wearing an electronic bracelet and a ban on receiving visitors at the place of his detention except for first-degree family members. The judge further ruled that Zadorov must deposit his passport in order to prevent a possible exit from the country.
Additionally, Judge Stein ruled that the police will be permitted to listen in to all communications, phones and computers inside the house.
The prosecution demanded that Zadorov be detained behind bars during the retrial, claiming that he was dangerous and there were concerns of his escape. However, Stein rejected the claim: "The lack of violence on the part of the respondent during his long stay in prison and his proper conduct as an employee in the prison locksmith, are also acceptable and weighty evidence," Stein explained.
"And as has already been pointed out by me, this evidence reduces his dangerousness from a very high level to a medium to a medium-high level. The trial court was therefore correct in its decision to transfer the respondent to arrest with an electronic bracelet outside prison."
The Nazareth District Court decided earlier this month to release Zadorov under restrictive conditions while the retrial in his case takes place. Judge Arafat Taha, who is not one of the judges in the retrial, ruled that Zadorov would be released with an electronic bracelet and stay at his home around the clock. At his request and at the request of his wife, Zadorov is expected to stay at her parents' house in Katzrin if he is released.
"After 15 years in which the applicant was in prison and his conviction was revoked, the balance point has changed, and the emphasis today is on the applicant's rights and protection in view of the imbalance set forth in the Detention Law regarding the length of the detention period, even in serious offenses, such as... rape and murder," the judge wrote in his decision. "The state almost ignored in its arguments the length of time the applicant has been in prison, and raised its claims as if this was the first hearing in his case."
Taha concluded: "It was not the applicant who had to prove he was deserving of release, but the state that had to show that despite the passage of time, there were special circumstances that warranted his continued detention behind bars. The state did not meet that burden."
TAIR RADA was murdered inside a bathroom stall at the Nofei Golan School in Katzrin on December 6, 2006. Almost three years later, the Nazareth District Court convicted Roman Zadorov, a foreign citizen and resident of Katzrin, of murdering the girl. The verdict ignored a dense fabric of defense evidence that led to his conviction.
Since then, however, the affair has continued to occupy the media and public opinion. Despite the firm verdict - the justice system has discussed it several more times and left the conviction intact. Zadorov, who worked in flooring at Rada's school, was arrested a few days after the murder, confessed to the murder and even reenacted it. He then retracted his confession, and as the trial progressed the defense was able to raise doubts among the public that Zadorov was indeed the killer.
Subsequently, the defense presented two new opinions regarding the type of knife with which Rada was murdered as well as the marks that were on her pants. The district court reviewed the opinion, and decided at the end of the day to uphold the conviction. However, Zadorov's defense team appealed to the Supreme Court again and this time Zadorov was again convicted of murder - but only by a majority opinion. Justices Yitzhak Amit and Zvi Zilbertal convicted the defendant, while Judge Yoram Danziger acquitted him out of doubt.
A year ago, Zadorov filed another appeal to the Supreme Court. About two months ago, Chief Justice Hanan Meltzer ruled that Zadorov should have a retrial. The trial will begin in the first half of October, and will be held continuously for about a year before judges Asher Kola, Danny Tzarfati and Tamar Nissim Shai. Before that, in mid-September, a preparatory hearing for the trial will be held in the district court.
The release to house arrest and the retrial is a step "in the right direction," said Ilana Rada, mother of Tair. "There are other people who are guilty. The truth that we have been exposing has been rejecting time after time. We are expecting a retrial."
Ilana Rada has expressed her belief that a student at the school had murdered Tair, and Roman is innocent. Another name associated with the murder is Ola Karvechengo, A.K. The suspicions against her were presented in "Shadow of Truth", a television series about the murder and the trial from 2016.
Zadorov's family has created a fundraising campaign to raise funds for the re-trail, which has so far procured over NIS 200,000 from the public.