Who killed Jimi Wahsh?

Who killed Jimi Wahsh?
By Yossi Melman


He was the first Bedouin in the IDF paratrooper's course, from a family with a long history of assisting the security forces. Sixteen months ago, the body of Nazmi Wahsh Samania, known as Jimi, was found in his resort village near Nahariya, his skull smashed. Now the police are putting a new investigative team on the case.

photo caption: Nazmi Wahsh Samania, better known as Jimi. He was a controversial man who lived in several worlds simultaneously and took many secrets with him to the grave.

Former deputy Shin Bet chief Yisrael Hasson arrived at the Sahara resort village on Betzet Beach north of Nahariya at around 7:30 in the morning. He noticed two cars parked nearby. Hasson picked up the hammock he'd brought as a present for Jimi and got out of his car. He entered the round bar area and called out Jimi's name several times. When no one answered, Hasson got back to his car and drove to Shlomi, just a few minutes away. There, he left the hammock with his friend, Shuki Azoulay, and asked him to give it to Jimi the first chance he got.

At around 10:30, Azoulay, who was one of Jimi's closest friends, decided to go looking for him. He drove to the resort and called out Jimi's name, but got no response. Azoulay knew that Jimi could be in one of two places: In his hut at the resort, or at his home, in the Bedouin neighborhood of Moshav Ya'ara. So he drove up the mountain to Ya'ara, where he met the widow Subhiya, Jimi's sister-in-law. "Have you seen Jimi?" he asked her. Subhiya was frightened. "Has something happened," she worried. "No, no," he reassured her. "He hasn't been here. He's been sleeping at the resort," she said.

Azoulay returned to his home in Shlomi and ate lunch, but the question of where Jimi had disappeared to kept bothering him. He decided to make another trip to the resort village. When he came to the modest hut at the Sahara that Jimi used as his quarters, he opened a side window and entered the hut that way. Inside, he found Jimi's nude body lying on the floor, the feet resting on the bed. Jimi's skull was shattered. Horrified, Azoulay phoned Hasson and told him what he'd seen. "Tell the police immediately. I'm on the way," Hasson replied. Jimi, 47, left a wife and two small children, aged three and four.

The body was discovered at 1:30 P.M. on Saturday, October 4, 2003. Ten minutes later, Hasson called attorney Shlomo Ben-Aryeh of Tel Aviv, another friend of Jimi's. "Yisrael told me that Jimi had been killed," says Ben-Aryeh. Police officers from the Galilee District arrived and collected evidence and the initial witness accounts. The two couples who were staying in huts at the site reported that they hadn't heard any suspicious noises or noticed any suspicious movements. The pathology report determined that the murder weapon had been an especially sharp instrument, such as an ax.

That same Saturday, a female suicide bomber blew herself up inside the Maxim restaurant on the Carmel beach, killing 21 people. The Sunday papers gave the terror attack broad coverage. Jimi's murder was reported in a brief item in Haaretz.

The murder investigation was assigned to a special detective team headed by Major Eliahu Fuchs of the Central Unit. The team interviewed Jimi's family members, friends, business partners and others who had ties to Jimi's past. Galilee District Police spokesman Major Koby David says that every avenue of investigation was pursued: the police checked whether the motive was nationalistic, romantic, a family dispute, a business dispute regarding the running of the resort village or a settling of scores by criminals. After sixteen months of investigative work that yielded no answers, the team was disbanded.

"The investigation went as far as it could," says David. "But now, at the instruction of District Deputy Commander Daniel Hadad, a new investigative team has been set up, headed by Major Meir Keren. The new team did not have access to the case before and so it is coming to the investigation fresh, with a new approach. The team will review all the evidence and testimony in the case and try to move it forward. We are treating this unsolved incident with the utmost seriousness."

The life of Jimi?

Jimi's real name was Nazmi Wahsh Samania. When he died at age 47, he remained just as anonymous as he was during his lifetime. But behind this anonymity lies a fascinating life story of a controversial man, who lived in several worlds at once and took many secrets with him to the grave. "There wasn't just one Jimi. There were several Jimis, who sometimes got into conflict with one another but always knew how to reconcile and live in harmony," says attorney Ben-Aryeh, who was also Jimi's legal adviser.

There was Jimi the Bedouin youth, the shepherd from Western Galilee. There was Jimi the first Bedouin to fight for his right to enlist in the paratroops rather than serve as a tracker, as Bedouin traditionally do in the Israel Defense Forces. There was the Jimi who for years shared an apartment in Nahariya with a Christian woman from Germany and wanted to marry her, but in the end surrendered to his family's dictates and the fetters of tradition. There was Jimi the bon vivant - short, curly-haired and solidly built - who drank double shots of whiskey and attracted women like moths to the light. There was Jimi the businessman, who opened and closed various nightspots between Nahariya and Rosh Hanikra. And there was the Jimi who didn't understand money, who unthinkingly frittered it away and fell into bankruptcy, causing trouble for others as a result. And there was the tough Jimi, who got into fistfights and physical violence and drug use and had a police record. There was the Jimi who was friends with people from the Shin Bet and Military Intelligence, and there was Jimi who was friends with Israeli Arabs and Palestinians from Gaza. There was the Jimi with the family connection to the Bani al-Hayb clan from Beit Zarzir, one of whose sons, Omer, a lieutenant colonel in the IDF, was accused of spying and of drug dealing with Hezbollah. And there's the Jimi who became friends with Yisrael Hasson and found ways into his pocket, too.

Jimi's mother was from the Al-Hayb clan, which is concentrated in the villages of Tuba and Beit Zarzir. On his father's side, Jimi came from the Samania tribe, whose members live mostly in Tarshiha, Shefaram and Al-Aramshe on the Israel-Lebanon border, not far from Kibbutz Adamit. Several dozen of them live in Moshav Ya'ara, to which many came in the 1950s from southern Lebanon after having collaborated with the Hagana and the IDF. The family had land in the area that was expropriated upon the founding of the state; with the intervention of the Defense Ministry, they were given land in Ya'ara in exchange, and so built their homes there.

During World War II, Jimi's grandfather, Mahmoud Abdel Ghani, served as a guide for the British soldiers who were fighting against the French Vichy government's forces in Lebanon and Syria. He took part in the commando raid in which Moshe Dayan lost his eye and helped evacuate him to the Galilee. Many members of the extended family worked for the Hagana's intelligence service and later with the intelligence corps.

Abdel Ghani was killed in 1956, when his house in Al-Aramshe was blown up. The bomb was planted by a distant relative. The family has two theories about the explosion: One, the attack was carried out at the behest of the Lebanese, who wanted revenge on the head of the family for his collaboration with the Jews and with Israel. The other theory attributes the explosion to a business dispute within the family. During the Lebanon War, when they were called up for reserve duty, Jimi and another relative tried to locate the man suspected of murdering their grandfather, but failed to do so.

Mountain leopard

An exception to the Israeli norm, Ya'ara is a moshav where Jews and Muslim Arabs live together. The Bedouin neighborhood is located next to the moshav entrance. During the day, the men are away at work. Most of them serve in the security forces - the IDF, the Border Police and the Israel Police. The rest work the land or tend their flocks. The women are occupied with housework. The children are at school, the younger ones run about among the yards of the houses or ride bikes in the moshav's streets.

Nazmi Wahsh was born in 1956. At age 12, after his father died, he dropped out of school to tend the family's flocks. Once a day, he would descend the mountain to the meeting point at a certain curve in the road, where a relative brought him his food. He grew up wild in nature and learned how to survive in any weather. He told his friends that he used to go around barefoot most of the time. And there were times when he found himself tending the flock for days and nights with no food.

"The atmosphere here was one of trust and blind loyalty to the state," says one of Jimi's relatives. "Most of us served in the security forces, wore uniforms and went around with weapons." From this standpoint, Nazmi Wahsh was no different than the rest of his family, and did not conceal his desire to enlist in the IDF. But from a young age, it was plain that he was different. It started with his curly mane, which earned him the nickname Jimi, after the guitarist Jimi Hendrix. It continued with his frequent visits to "the big city" - Nahariya, where he started to hang out with young Jewish teens, and reached a peak with his tendency to get into trouble with the authorities.

Court records tell the story. In March 1975, a Nahariya court found him guilty of theft and imposed a fine of 50 liras or 15 days in jail. Between then and his murder, he racked up other convictions for insulting a public worker, trespassing, assault, brawling in a public place, possession of suspected stolen property, drug possession and, in 1999, for "offenses toward human life, including bodily harm, threats and serious physical injury."

In May 1977, about two years after his first brush with the law, Jimi enlisted in the IDF. He was 21 already and, here, too, displayed the determination that set him apart. He adamantly refused to follow the path laid out for him and his kind by the State of Israel, and insisted on enlisting in the paratroops. After a difficult, two-year struggle, he became the first Bedouin to serve in the paratroops.

"I got to know him during the enlistment in Battalion 890," says Ben-Aryeh. "Jimi was an outstanding soldier. In terms of soldiering and field know-how, he had no rivals. All the experience he amassed in shepherding the family flocks came to the fore in his military service. He lived the field. He had eagle eyes and extraordinary abilities as a tracker."

Most of the time he wore shoes without socks, including during the exceedingly strenuous 120-kilometer trek to earn his paratrooper's beret. "A mountain leopard that no cage could hold," his company commander, Ehud Ariel, later killed in Lebanon, wrote about him. But his independent spirit and chafing at authority were also his undoing. During a training session in the Judean desert, Jimi vanished. He'd taken off to go to Jerusalem for a date with a female tourist who'd fallen in love with him when he was on furlough. Jimi, who already had some disciplinary infractions on his record, was declared AWOL and his commanders could no longer cover up for him. He was transferred out of the paratroop battalion before finishing the course, and put in a Druze unit.

The unit's base was north of Nahariya, in the landscapes familiar to him from his childhood. Opinions are split on the period he spent serving in the unit. Some of the soldiers who knew him then say that he served at headquarters, in non-combat roles. Others, such as Danny Moyal of Nahariya, who was later Jimi's business partner, remember him as commanding patrols intended to protect the northern shores. Ben-Aryeh, who says their friendship lasted from basic training days until Jimi was killed, says that Jimi was always a combat soldier, including in his reserve duty in Lebanon.

Ingratitude

After completing his compulsory army service, Jimi returned to his family in Ya'ara and started a new chapter in his life. According to his family, throughout the eighties, he was searching for himself and trying to find meaning in his life. "He didn't have anything to do and didn't have a penny to his name," says one person who knew him. He did odd jobs to get by. One of these was as a security guard at Kibbutz Ayalon. His application to join the Border Police was rejected, "since, as a kid, when I was a shepherd, I got a police record for trespassing," he said in a 1988 interview in Ma'ariv.

Disappointed, he went to Europe, following his German girlfriend. He returned to Israel in 1982 and then began to develop a close friendship with family friend Yosef Amit, an officer in the Egoz commando unit who was seriously wounded in an operation near Tyre in 1972.

Even though he was recognized as a disabled IDF veteran, Amit insisted on continuing to serve in the army. Because of his disability, he was transferred to the intelligence branch where, with the rank of major, he commanded Unit 504. According to foreign press reports, this unit was charged with collecting intelligence via agents operating outside of Israel.

In 1978, police officers arrested Major Amit's driver near Kiryat Ono, with significant amounts of drugs in his possession. The driver claimed that Amit, his commander, was aware of his actions. Amit vehemently denied this and claimed that the driver was framing him. A military court convicted the driver and sentenced him to seven years' imprisonment. Amit was not charged; he was sent for medical examinations and then hospitalized in the open ward of the Mizra psychiatric hospital.

In 1981, Amit was discharged from the hospital and from the IDF, and went to work for a private investigation firm in the north. In response to a request from Haaretz, he declined to elaborate on his connections with Jimi and would only say: "I didn't know about his death until less than a year ago, when I was summoned to give testimony at the Acre police headquarters. My acquaintance with him was part of the social and professional ties that I had with his extended family in Moshav Ya'ara. They treated me like one of the family. At the end of 1985 or the beginning of 1986, he asked me to help him in various areas, and this was a little while after his cousin died under tragic circumstances. Even though I didn't have a cent, I helped them as much as I could. I gave blood for his sister, who was sick with leukemia. I paid for all the medicines she needed. I helped his brother and his widowed mother.

"I did this despite the warnings I got from his family, that I should keep my eyes open and watch out for him. Unfortunately, he showed me ingratitude. He slandered me and made up things about me and eventually got me into a lot of trouble."

How did he get you into trouble?

"I don't want to talk about that. Especially since a defamation suit I brought against Haaretz is currently under way."

In May 1986, Amit was arrested and charged with illegal contact with a foreign agent. His trial was held behind closed doors, but somehow it was still leaked to the media that "a major from Military Intelligence was accused of spying for Syria." These were false and apparently malicious reports - the imprisoned Amit was not able to respond to them or refute them. All of the defense witnesses that Amit tried to invite to testify at his trial declined to appear and to testify in his favor. Amit: "And why did they decline to appear? Because someone saw to it that they would. I have evidence of this that I hope will soon help my truth to come to light."

In 1993, Amit was released after serving two-thirds of his sentence. In the meantime, new details about the episode emerged: An officer in the U.S. Navy, whose ship docked at the Haifa port, contacted him and proposed a business partnership in a textile concern. Amit traveled to Germany where he met with "friends" of that same officer. These "friends" were CIA personnel who were exploring the possibility of recruiting him. In the end, Amit was not recruited, but for these contacts and for keeping military documents at home, he was convicted of security offenses and sentenced to 21 years in prison.

According to several people from the Samania family, Jimi was one of the prosecution witnesses and received financial compensation from the state for his efforts - to the tune of NIS 14,000-15,000. His behavior evoked the wrath of some of his relatives, who suspected that he'd contributed to Amit's conviction and imprisonment. A few of them cut off all contact with him. Jimi sank into depression and tried to kill himself by swallowing an overdose of pills. Repeated attempts to get an account of these events from Jimi's brother Afif, who is handling his estate, were unsuccessful.

The nightlife king

Then a new stage began in Jimi's life, in which he led a wild nightlife and was exposed to a whole new world of business opportunities. During this time, Jimi was a familiar figure at Nahariya's cafes, pubs and nightclubs. This was at the height of the IDF's presence in southern Lebanon. Nahariya was teeming with UN personnel, diplomats, call girls, criminals, drug dealers, IDF officers and people from the intelligence community. Jimi fit in easily in this atmosphere. In the nineties, he was a partner in five different business enterprises involving pubs and restaurants, which made him the king of nightlife on the coastal strip between Nahariya and Rosh Hanikra.

The places he was involved in attracted a lot of customers. "I'm the one who invented Jimi the entrepreneur," Ilan Oppenheimer, owner of the Penguin Cafe on Ga'aton Avenue in Nahariya says with a smile. "He always told everyone: Ilan invented me. Jimi was working in gardening then and he used to sit here in the cafe, and we got to be friends."

In 1990, Oppenheimer won a tender from the Nahariya municipality to develop the city's boardwalk. He set up an amusement park, a restaurant, a pub and a pizzeria there, and together with Jimi, a traditional Bedouin-style tent encampment. "We brought in camels and Jimi brought some people from his family who made pitot and za'atar, but we didn't forget beer for the guests, either."

About Jimi as a business partner, he says: "He was not a simple person. He was never calm. You had to watch him. He had problems with the waitresses, too. I felt like a big brother toward him. We were very close. Jimi told me about his past and about the ties he and his family had with the defense establishment, but I'm not sure I believed everything he told me. I took what he said with a grain of salt."

After about three years, Oppenheimer shut down all his activity on the boardwalk. Jimi copied the idea of the Bedouin encampment and set up a similar one at Sasi Shemesh's holiday village in Akhziv. "Jimi was a great guy," says Shemesh. "He was a partner and a friend, and the Bedouin encampment did very well. But Jimi had other, bigger dreams."

The problem that all of his business partners noticed was that Jimi had no understanding at all of money. "For him, 10 shekels or 10,000 shekels was the same thing," says his friend Ben-Aryeh. His dream was to build a real resort village on the beach, not another Bedouin encampment. The dream came true with the help of the Wahsh Samania family's extensive ties with the defense establishment. Some of these ties originated in wake of tragedies suffered by the family. In 1983, Jimi's cousin was arrested for smuggling half a kilo of hashish from Lebanon. Jimi was especially close to this cousin. A military court gave him a particularly harsh six-year sentence. When he finally got out of prison, the cousin sank into depression and eventually killed himself. Certain family members held Jimi responsible for his death, and ostracized him.

About two years later, in April 1988, Ramzi Wahsh, Jimi's 19-year-old brother, was killed when terrorists ambushed an IDF patrol on Har Dov. Four years after that, in 1992, Jimi lost another brother, Lutfi Wahsh, who served in the Border Police and died of natural causes. Then-defense minister Yitzhak Rabin gave Jimi a letter in which he recommended that the authorities try to assist him. Two other ministers, Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, also intervened on his behalf and persuaded the Israel Lands Administration and the Asher Regional Council to allot to Jimi (without a tender) three dunams at the Betzet beach. On the beach there, about 100 meters from the waterline, Jimi began building the village of his dreams. His pockets were empty; all he had was Rabin's recommendation letter and commitments from the ILA and the regional council to allot him the land. He needed an investor. Which is how he came to know entrepreneur and contractor Michael Wasserman.

Confrontations at Sahara

Via his company, Alonei Ofer, Wasserman signed contracts to build houses in northern communities, including Ya'ara. That's where he met Jimi. "I got to know the family and the elders of the clan, and through them I met Jimi," says Wasserman, 48. "He told me about his military past and about his ties with the defense establishment and that he'd received land without a tender. He proposed that we form a business partnership. The idea sounded good to me and I agreed. But to make an impression on me, Jimi said that before we enter into a partnership, he would check into my past with the help of his connections in the defense establishment."

In October 1996, Wasserman's Alonei Ofer company signed an agreement with Nazmi Wahsh Samania to build the Sahara holiday village. The partnership got off the ground with Wasserman investing, by his own account, over $1.5 million to develop the area and build the village. Wasserman says that his money paid for the development work. Jimi, though, who was known for being good with his hands, built a number of the buildings himself. For a while, it seemed that Jimi's dream was taking real shape. Huts and cabins and a bar designed to be a pub and a restaurant were all built.

For several months, the site was opened and attracted a good crowd. But then the regional council's oversight department discovered that Sahara was operating without a business license, and more seriously, that "the three dunams allotted for the Bedouin encampment had become a 12-dunam resort village. Jimi and his partners took over nine dunams that do not belong to them," says the council head, Yehuda Shavit. The council issued closure and demolition orders for Sahara. Jimi was seething with anger and got into some sharp verbal confrontations with Shavit. In 2001, after ceaseless struggles with the regional council, Jimi was forced to tear down some of the buildings.

Yehuda Shavit: "My problem with Sahara and with Jimi was based on principle. I didn't understand then, and I still don't understand now, why the ILA allotted this land to Jimi, who lived in Ya'ara, which is not within the council's area. Look, I understand that this was a bereaved family, but there are other bereaved families living in our council's area and no one has been giving them land. So what was happening here?"

How would you answer that question?

"I received all kinds of explanations - that the Defense Ministry is behind the family, that the Shin Bet is helping them and that this was a special case and that's why the ILA gave him the land without a tender."

Who gave you these explanations?

"All kinds of people in the defense establishment, such as former deputy Shin Bet chief Yisrael Hasson."

The ILA responds that the land was allotted to Jimi in accordance with all procedures and approved by the ILA's exemption committee, which has the authority to waive the tender requirement, and by the Israel Lands Council. "Every year, there are dozens of cases in which land is allotted without a tender, and this is not an exceptional case," says ILA spokeswoman Ortal Tzabar.

The mysterious witness

Yisrael Hasson owns Hasson Energy, which supplies fuel to factories and gas stations in northern Israel. In his office in Tivon, he responds to the question of how a deputy Shin Bet chief came to be connected with Jimi and his resort village:

"I met Jimi through a friend, which is also how I got to know his special family, whose contribution to state security is tremendous. Jimi told me that he'd gotten into financial difficulties and that he needed investors, so I gave him a loan."

Was it a loan or a partnership?

"It wasn't a partnership. In the framework of my assistance to the family, I gave Jimi a certain loan."

How big was the loan?

"Out of respect for him and his family, I prefer not to name the sum." (Various sources put it at $50,000.)

And you don't see any conflict of interest in the connection between the two of you?

"Absolutely not. I only met Jimi in 2002, after I'd left the Shin Bet, when I was already a private citizen. I didn't know him before and I never had any professional connection with him."

Hasson's involvement in Jimi's enterprise came after financial disputes erupted between Jimi and his partner Wasserman, who says he suddenly found himself dumped from the partnership. The disputes between Wasserman and Jimi, his heirs and Ben-Aryeh have been making their way through various courts for several years.

Jimi brought in another investor for his resort village, Danny Moyal from Nahariya. Moyal, who owned a business called Danny Electric, served with Jimi in the army and kept in close touch with him through the years. "I became a partner against my will," he says. "I did various projects for Jimi and invested money in the place." Moyal declines to cite a sum, but various sources indicate that he invested about $100,000. "I got part of the money back" - the $50,000 from Yisrael Hasson - "and since he couldn't pay back the rest, I suggested that we go into a partnership. I'm sure my money will be returned in the end."

The conflicts over financial difficulties peaked one Friday in January 1999. Members of the Hasarmeh family from the Galilee village of Ba'ayna, builders and stonecutters, showed up at the Sahara site to demand payment for the stone they'd supplied. The argument between Jimi and his nephew Sami and the unexpected visitors quickly escalated to fisticuffs. Jimi ran to his hut and returned with a Jericho pistol, for which he had a license. He said he fired two warning shots in the air and afterward shot one of the Hasarmeh men in the leg.

At the conclusion of the police investigation, an indictment was issued against Jimi. He was forbidden to leave the country and his passport and pistol were confiscated by the police. His lawyer, Ben-Aryeh, argued that the shooting was committed in self-defense, after Jimi was attacked and feared for his life. In September 1999, he was convicted in Haifa District Court. Character witnesses from the defense establishment testified about the contributions Jimi and his family had made to state security and thus helped him secure a more lenient sentence. He was sentenced to four months, which he served by doing community service at the fire station in Nahariya, and the police soon returned his pistol to him. Since Jimi admitted to all the facts in the indictment, the members of the Hasarmeh family were not summoned to testify in court. They say the first time they ever heard anything about a trial taking place was when they were contacted for this article.

A document from another trial that took place in 1994 in Nazareth District Court (Criminal Case 18/94) and was subsequently heard by the Supreme Court in Jerusalem somehow found its way into Jimi's court case. The 1994 trial was of three accused drug dealers, headed by Ayoub ibn Jerais Jubran. The three were convicted of involvement in the purchase of 176 grams of heroin from a drug dealer in southern Lebanon. The court accepted the arguments of the prosecution and the police, declared Jubran a "drug trafficker" and sentenced him to six and a half years in jail.

A review of the court records shows that the police minister issued an immunity certificate, whereby "for the sake of the public interest," not all of the details of the episode were revealed. The reason this document found its way into Jimi's case remains a mystery. "At the trial, a prosecution witness whose name was not revealed appeared; he testified in disguise to protect his identity," recalls Jubran's attorney, Tamar Ullman. "The witness presented himself as a police agent who assisted in uncovering the drug deal that occurred next to Jubran's garage in Nazareth."

Do you know who this witness was?

"I have no idea."



Sixteen months after the murder of Nazmi "Jimi" Wahsh Samania, the Galilee District Police are hoping that their new investigative team will make progress in solving the crime. "We've already ruled out the possibility that the murder was committed for security-related or nationalistic reasons," says the police spokesman. Jimi's widow and his brothers, the heirs to his estate, which includes the resort village, are making efforts to untangle the legal mess so they can reopen the site. With Yisrael Hasson's help, they are searching for investors. Two of them have even met with Yehuda Shavit of the regional council. Jimi's creditors are hoping that if the site goes back into operation, they might see their money. Jimi's friends and some of his relatives miss his colorful personality and expansive charm. And Yosef Amit, who makes no effort to hide his hatred for Jimi, is hoping that he'll soon be able to take steps to clear his name.


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