Police on Wednesday announced that they have solved the January 16, 2011 murder of Benny Hasa z”l, who headed Haifa’s Ashkenazi chevra kadisha.

The niftar was gunned down, hit by five bullets in front of his home in Sinai Street.

Police report the suspect in custody is Beit Shemesh resident Yitzchak Hazan, 40, who murdered Hasa after the deceased refused to give burial plots in Haifa. An indictment will most likely be filed against him on Friday, 19 Iyar.

On January 16, 2011, the victim was driving home with his wife. Five shots were fired at him from point blank range in front of their home. The assailant fled.

Members of the chevra kadisha told police after the murder that Hasa was threatened in the past surrounding disputes over burial plots. In 2004 the door of the family home was set on fire. A number of months later, acid was thrown in his face. No suspects were arrested.

A number of suspects were arrested during the investigation but ultimately, the focus of the investigation was on Hazan, who “is known to police”, indicating he has a criminal record. Police are indicating that Hazan was a hired gun, carrying out the murder for another person who was involved in a dispute over cemetery plots between different chevra kadishas in Haifa. The gun used in the murder was traced back to a weapons theft back in 2001, later found near a mikve in Beit Shemesh inside a sock. Crime lab technicians were successful in obtaining DNA from the weapon.

Police theorize that Hazan arrived in Haifa two days before the murder together with a friend. Hazan staked out the area, becoming familiar with the victim’s home and the street he lived on. On the day of the murder he shot the victim dead and then fled to the home of a relative in the city. The accomplice waited for him there and they traveled back to Beit Shemesh together.

According to investigators, he received 40,000 NIS in cash for the murder. Police add the dispute over the plot which led to hiring an assassin was over “numerous plots” ranging from 3,000 NIS to tens of thousands NIS each. Even more astonishing is the fact that police add the man who ordered the assassination is a volunteer in one of Haifa’s chevra kadisha organizations.

Hasa was 67 at the time of the murder and he headed the chevra for a decade, inheriting the position from his late father. He was lt.-colonel in the IDF reserves and was a commander over a unit responsible for kvura in the military, in the northern district. He is survived by a wife and four children and grandchildren. Police add that from their investigation they have established that the niftar handled the chevra kadisha in accordance to the law and was “squeaky clean”.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)