Prof. Yehuda Hiss has been all but officially suspended from his position as Director of the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute. Health Minister Nissim Dahan received a severe report today detailing Hiss\' faulty performance over the past years. The report accuses Hiss of violating both laws and Health Ministry regulations, including the removing of many organs from corpses - and even preserving them for years - without the knowledge of the families of the dead. Dr. Yitzchak Berlovitz will run the Institute until a formal decision is made based on the report.
The report, written by former Justice Aryeh Segelson, two doctors, and three medical professors, states that large quantities of corpse organs are stored in Abu Kabir. Hiss and his workers \"violated the concept of honoring the dead and their families\" by transferring many of the organs to research institutes, sometimes for money, and by replacing them with other objects in the bodies. The required agreement from the families was not obtained, and proper records were not kept.
Hiss and several of his workers testified before the Committee, but they apparently did not make a good impression; the report states that the workers appeared to have been briefed beforehand on what to say, and that Hiss himself gave \"confused and contradictory answers.\" The report\'s findings will be made available to justice officials, to see if a criminal investigation should be begun against Prof. Hiss.
Arutz-7\'s Ariel Kahane notes that State Pathologist Hiss generally decides Israel\'s pathological-legal questions, and many people are now in prison based on his findings. However, this is not the first time that his professional standards have been publicly maligned. In the case of Beitar community security chief Nachum Korman, Jerusalem District Court Judge Ruth Orr sharply criticized Hiss for testifying that a 12-year-old Arab rock-thrower died as a result of a beating by Korman. She wrote that Hiss \"was carried away by his desire to find the exact cause of the death... and ignored important pathological findings that did not correspond with this desire.\"
In addition, on Oct. 13, \'97, Arutz-7 reported as follows:
\"Margalit Omeisi, who was proven to be the mother of Tsila Levine - a California woman who disappeared from her family almost 50 years ago in the \"Yemenite children\" scandal - submitted a complaint to the police yesterday against Professor Yehuda Hiss of the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute. Mrs. Omeisi claims that he violated the medical secrecy to which he obligated himself when he publicized the results of a DNA test that he carried out which showed that she and Tsila Levine are not related. Both Omeisi and Levine do not accept the results of the Hiss test, saying that the method used is reportedly not authoritative.\"
In yet another case, Arutz-7 reported in March \'99 that 20 Israelis \"requested that the police investigate State Pathologist Dr. Yehuda Hiss on suspicion of altering Rabin\'s wounds and submitting false evidence to the Shamgar Commission… [Barry] Chamish presented Dr. Hiss\' Pathological Report, which stated that Rabin suffered no damage to his spinal cord, nor was wounded by a frontal chest wound. [However,] the complainants also submitted Dr. Mordechai Gutman\'s Surgical Procedures Report, as well as taped testimony by Ichilov Hospital Director Dr. Gabi Barabash and former Health Minister Ephraim Sneh, to the effect that Rabin\'s backbone was shattered and that there was a frontal chest wound...\"
The report, written by former Justice Aryeh Segelson, two doctors, and three medical professors, states that large quantities of corpse organs are stored in Abu Kabir. Hiss and his workers \"violated the concept of honoring the dead and their families\" by transferring many of the organs to research institutes, sometimes for money, and by replacing them with other objects in the bodies. The required agreement from the families was not obtained, and proper records were not kept.
Hiss and several of his workers testified before the Committee, but they apparently did not make a good impression; the report states that the workers appeared to have been briefed beforehand on what to say, and that Hiss himself gave \"confused and contradictory answers.\" The report\'s findings will be made available to justice officials, to see if a criminal investigation should be begun against Prof. Hiss.
Arutz-7\'s Ariel Kahane notes that State Pathologist Hiss generally decides Israel\'s pathological-legal questions, and many people are now in prison based on his findings. However, this is not the first time that his professional standards have been publicly maligned. In the case of Beitar community security chief Nachum Korman, Jerusalem District Court Judge Ruth Orr sharply criticized Hiss for testifying that a 12-year-old Arab rock-thrower died as a result of a beating by Korman. She wrote that Hiss \"was carried away by his desire to find the exact cause of the death... and ignored important pathological findings that did not correspond with this desire.\"
In addition, on Oct. 13, \'97, Arutz-7 reported as follows:
\"Margalit Omeisi, who was proven to be the mother of Tsila Levine - a California woman who disappeared from her family almost 50 years ago in the \"Yemenite children\" scandal - submitted a complaint to the police yesterday against Professor Yehuda Hiss of the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute. Mrs. Omeisi claims that he violated the medical secrecy to which he obligated himself when he publicized the results of a DNA test that he carried out which showed that she and Tsila Levine are not related. Both Omeisi and Levine do not accept the results of the Hiss test, saying that the method used is reportedly not authoritative.\"
In yet another case, Arutz-7 reported in March \'99 that 20 Israelis \"requested that the police investigate State Pathologist Dr. Yehuda Hiss on suspicion of altering Rabin\'s wounds and submitting false evidence to the Shamgar Commission… [Barry] Chamish presented Dr. Hiss\' Pathological Report, which stated that Rabin suffered no damage to his spinal cord, nor was wounded by a frontal chest wound. [However,] the complainants also submitted Dr. Mordechai Gutman\'s Surgical Procedures Report, as well as taped testimony by Ichilov Hospital Director Dr. Gabi Barabash and former Health Minister Ephraim Sneh, to the effect that Rabin\'s backbone was shattered and that there was a frontal chest wound...\"