The Haifa District Prosecution filed an indictment with the Haifa District Court against Ali Masouda (28) for the intentional murder, under aggravated circumstances, of his wife, the late Yonit Masouda. According to the indictment, Masouda stabbed his wife to death in their Haifa apartment while their infant son was inside, and then washed the blood off her body in the shower in an attempt to cover up the evidence.
The indictment, filed by Attorney Merav Bar, shows that in the period before the murder, relations between the couple were strained, partly because of the fraught relationship between the victim and the Masouda family. After the birth of their son, the defendant began to suspect that his wife was cheating on him and planning to leave him.
On the night between September 24 and 25, Masouda attacked his wife, took a knife from the kitchen and plunged it forcefully into her neck, after deciding to kill her. The stab wound struck her windpipe and blood vessels in her neck, and she began to bleed profusely. Afterward, it is alleged, Masouda took the victim to the shower room and washed the blood off her body and his own. He then carried her out of the apartment and called police. Officers who arrived found her in the stairwell with no pulse and began resuscitation, and she was evacuated to Rambam Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.
He told everything to the informant
"The murder was planned," Masouda told an undercover informant during his detention. He admitted to the informant that he stabbed his wife with a knife, then washed her and called police, and even knocked on neighbors' doors to create the impression that he had tried to save her life. In police interrogations, however, he presented a completely different version, in which his wife was the one who grabbed the knife and stabbed herself.
He also claimed that his wife had cheated on him, lied to him, transferred money out of their joint account and planned to take their son. In the police interrogations, however, he gave another account. He claimed that his wife rampaged through the apartment holding a knife and even pressed the blade to her neck. He said she asked him to kill her, threatened to kill him and even wounded him with the knife, so he had to defend himself.
According to him, she also threatened their son with the knife, and he tried to keep her away from the infant. Later in the interrogation, he claimed that his wife tripped while holding the knife, stabbed herself accidentally, and then got up and was bleeding. But this version, too, contained contradictions. In some interrogations he said he saw the knife lodged in her neck and that she pulled it out herself, while in others he denied it.
When asked about the water found at the scene, he gave differing accounts as well. At first he claimed that his wife turned on the shower tap after she was stabbed. He later claimed that the water had already been running and that this was how she came into contact with it. This contradicts what he told the informant, that he himself washed her after the stabbing.
During the interrogations, Masouda claimed that the relationship between him and his wife was toxic, and that she had cheated on him and was planning to leave him for another man. He also claimed that she cared for the baby poorly, was violent toward him, wanted to commit suicide and had tried to harm herself in the past. When investigators confronted him with the incriminating statements he made to the informant, Masouda first claimed he did not recognize him, and later claimed the informant had told him "to put on an act." In his final interrogation, he refused to cooperate or answer the investigators' questions.
The findings gathered by investigators at the scene raised further questions about Masouda's account. According to police officers' reports and their body cameras, the woman's body had no blood on it, and her husband also appeared clean and wet. The apartment floor, however, was soaked in blood, parts of the bed were saturated with it, and numerous blood spatters covered the walls, including in the shower room. The couple's infant son was filmed sleeping in his bed, which also bore spatters of his mother's blood.
Police officers and Magen David Adom paramedics who arrived at the scene heard from the defendant that his wife had stabbed herself after the two argued. Body camera footage also showed that the defendant, who was with his wife in the stairwell, did not open the building's entrance door. Only a neighbor who noticed what was happening opened the door for the officers.
The preliminary opinion of the Institute of Forensic Medicine found that the woman died of blood loss combined with aspiration of blood into the airways. The cause was a stab wound to the neck that struck the windpipe, blood vessels and a cervical vertebra in the spine. The experts noted that the depth of the wound and the damage to the vertebra are not typical of self-inflicted injury. In addition, numerous fresh bruises were found on her body, and their characteristics also do not match self-harm.
As part of the investigation, testimony was also taken from the victim's friends, who said that since the birth of their son, the defendant had accused his wife of infidelity and checked her cellphone. One friend said that about a week before the murder she met the couple in Eilat. There, the victim told her that her husband hit her and broke her phone because he suspected she was texting another person. Another friend said that on September 11, the victim called her crying and said her husband had checked her phone and hit her on the forehead with it, because he suspected she was cheating on him with a neighbor.
In addition to intentional murder under aggravated circumstances, Masouda is also charged with obstruction of justice.
In the request to keep him in custody until the end of proceedings, the prosecution wrote, "The defendant acted coolly, and after the murder he washed the victim and himself, and although he called the 100 emergency line, he did not share the details of the incident, and even provided only partial and tendentious details. This cunning conduct attests to his great danger, but also to his composure during the murder and afterward, hence the high concern over obstruction of legal proceedings in the future."
