Womanhires sleuth to probe niece’s death

THE AUNT of a British woman who died in Israel has hired a private investigator because, she claims, police are not dealing with the case properly.

Deborah Pearson was forced to take the drastic measure after trying to persuade Israeli police to treat the death of her niece, Julie Pearson, as murder.

Julie, 38, from Kinross in Scotland, died in Eilat last November after she was allegedly attacked by her boyfriend Amjab Hatib. Mr Hatib was questioned by police at the time but not detained.

Ms Pearson, who lives in Kinross, flew to Eilat last week to quiz police on what steps they have taken to uncover what happened to her niece.

She said: “I had a lot of questions and they just kept saying ‘We can’t answer that’ or ‘It’s still under investigation’.

“I’ve had to hire an investigator because I don’t think they are doing their job properly, they’re not investigating enough.”

She added that the family still did not know how Julie died. “The main question I wanted to ask was: Julie died on November 27 — nobody informed us, it was one of her friends that called us. If he hadn’t called what would have happened? They said maybe they would have just buried her in Israel and nobody would have known.”

Ms Pearson, who speaks Hebrew and whose mother and brother were born in Jerusalem, said she had been shouted and sworn at during her visit by people she claimed were friends of Mr Hatib. She said officials from the British embassy in Israel had advised that she was not safe in Eilat and should leave.

“The embassy staff had come to support me in the meetings with the police. [But] they suggested we should leave Eilat, that it wasn’t safe,” she said. “I’m never coming back to Eilat, never.”

Ms Pearson is now attempting to obtain the post-mortem report on her neice.

A spokesman for Israel Police told the JC that they were waiting for autopsy results. “Only when the cause of Julie’s death will be clear, the police investigation will then be able to advance.”