The Israel Police is finding it challenging to obtain forensic findings from items collected at the site of the Oct. 7 Supernova music festival massacre.
Ynet reported on Sunday that it obtained an internal document stating that the forensic laboratories at National Police Headquarters in Jerusalem are having difficulties extracting fingerprints from axes, knives, cartridges and other objects taken from the murder scenes.
This could complicate prosecuting the Hamas terrorists who committed the atrocities at the festival grounds near Kibbutz Re’im in southern Israel, where at least 350 people were murdered.
“The laboratory’s capacity is very limited in developing fingerprints on bullets and cartridges in particular, and on metal surfaces such as knives and pipe bombs. The main method used in the laboratory is ‘superglue’ and colorants. This method has a very limited ability on cartridges and pipebombs, and its success rates approach zero,” a senior Defense Ministry explained in the document.
According to the document, “the laboratory conducted in-depth research in order to find a solution for developing fingerprints on cartridges and bullets, but the method that was tried has very low success rates in real cases.”
Lahav 433, known as the “Israeli FBI,” is conducting the most complex criminal investigation in the history of the Israel Police.
According to the Ynet report, the Israel Police recently reached out to labs abroad and a British manufacturer of systems for producing forensic findings to provide the police with advanced equipment capable of extracting forensic evidence from the belongings of the terrorists.
Several hundred terrorists from the Oct. 7 massacre are sitting in Israeli prisons. Some are from Hamas’s elite “Nukhba” commando unit that led the assault, while others are from Islamic Jihad, the second wave of armed men and the third wave of Gaza residents who committed mass looting.
Legal evidence must be collected for terrorists to be charged and convicted for the atrocities, which included murder, rape and other sexual offenses, kidnappings, property offensives and security offenses.
Additional charges, such as genocide, may be laid.
