The family of a woman who was killed in a terror attack is suing Israel's National Forensic Institute for negligence, after discovering that body parts that had been removed from the woman's body in an autopsy after she was killed ended up buried – in the same grave as the terrorist who murdered her.
The lawsuit names the Institute and its former head, Professor Yehuda Hiss, currently the Institute's Chief Pathologist. The report did not name a specific sum that the family was demanding, but sources said that it was in the millions of shekels.
The report on Channel Ten Wednesday night did not name the woman, because of the sensitivity of the matter and because of the legal implications. The report said that the woman was killed several years ago in a terror attack along with her husband. After the attack, the Institute conducted an autopsy, but apparently “forgot” to include part of the woman's skull when forwarding her remains for burial. The family later discovered that the skull part had been buried in the same grave as the terrorist who killed her. The report did not specify how the family came by this information.
After making this discovery, the family also found out that other parts of the woman's body had not been buried at all. Those body parts were eventually surrendered to the family, which was forced to hold a second funeral for those parts.
The Israel Forensic Institute has come under fire numerous times in recent years for various mixups in burial and disposal of the remains of autopsy subjects. In 2010, the Pasternak family sued the Institute for mixing up body parts of victims of a plane crash on whom autopsies had been conducted. The bodies were exhumed for reburial, and the family was horrified to discover that body parts had been buried stored inside supermarket shopping bags.
Family members in the new lawsuit accused the Institute and Hiss of gross disrespect to their dead relative, compounded by the fact that she was the victim of a terror attack. “The way the Institute handled this has hurt us very badly,” a spokesperson for the family said. “The fact that a part of her skull was buried with the terrorist who killed her is devastating.”