JERUSALEM (ISRAEL)
The Guardian
March 1, 2018
By Oliver Holmes
Private investigator who collected more than 200 hours of footage following Malka Leifer says videos build case for extradition
An Israeli private investigator has shared videos with the Guardian he says show alleged child sex abuser Malka Leifer living a “normal, healthy” life despite being declared unfit to be extradited to Australia.
Tsafrir Tsahi collected more than 200 hours of footage of the former school principal who is living in Israel but wanted in Australia on 74 counts of suspected sexual assault and rape at a Jewish ultra-Orthodox girls school in Melbourne.
Tsahi’s material has now been handed over the police, who subsequently conducted their own investigation and have since rearrested Leifer on suspicion of “obstruction of justice”.
“I put a crew there who would watch her from morning to evening,” said Tsahi. Deploying a surveillance team in the occupied West Bank settlement where Leifer lives, Tsahi says he has built a case that proves she is “a normal, healthy person”.
“We learnt she was speaking on the phone all day long,” said Tsahi, whose investigators disguised themselves as construction workers to track the woman in December.
One day, they saw her take the bus for a one-hour journey to a suburb in Tel Aviv where her children live.
“We followed her there because it was very important to see that she can go to the post office, she can go to the butcher, she can go to buy clothes, she can meet her kids there. She buys them things. They come to visit her on the weekend.
“She has a problem now because the videos show she is a normal person. She can’t go back again to being someone who cannot function,” Tsahi said.
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