Tair Rada, an Israeli pupil, was 13 when she was found dead in a school toilet. This meticulous, riveting documentary on the case is sensitively handled and never forgets the victim
Shadow of Truth was first shown in 2016 in Israel, where the murder case it examines is notorious, before being bought a year later by Netflix for global streaming. Now it arrives on the BBC, with the addition of a fifth and final episode to include new information and more recent events. There is a lot to digest. What begins as a seemingly straightforward, if horrifying, true-crime documentary takes flight at the end of the first episode, where it transforms into a much wider story about corruption, conspiracy and justice in Israel.
Tair Rada was 13 when she was found dead at school in Katzrin, a town of 8,000 people, in the Golan Heights area between Israel and Syria. The documentary starts with a nightmarish interview with Tair’s mother, Ilana, who describes returning home and noticing her daughter’s backpack was not there. Initially, the head of the investigation, retired commander Avi Shai, said there were “no particularly worrisome signs” – after all, children are sometimes late home after school. But after a frantic search into the night, Tair’s body was found behind a locked cubicle door in the school toilets. Official photographs, thankfully shown sparingly, indicate a distressing and gruesome crime scene.
