Sergeant Adir Tahar was murdered by Hamas on October 7 and his decapitated head was put up for sale in Gaza after Hamas terrorists abused and dismembered his slain body, his father has said.
David Tahar told Israeli Channel 14 how he spent months searching for his son’s head, which was found in an ice cream fridge in Gaza following a Shin Bet investigation.
Tahar said that on October 7, Hamas “sent a missile and three grenades towards him [Adir]. From a CT scan I received recently his whole body is full of shrapnel, and unfortunately, the body of Adir was also abused after he was killed”.
The father continued: “I insisted very much with the army to see the body. They tried to explain to me that I should not see it.
“Half an hour before I buried my child, his body arrived at Mount Herzl [cemetery], I opened the coffin when I was alone... I understood exactly what I was burying. He was unrecognisable. I identified him by the discs [army tags] on his shoes".
The grieving father was forced to bury his son without his head.
"For almost two and a half months, I turned the world upside down to find out where the head was," the soldier’s father recounted.
“There's a video from Telegram,” Tahar went on. “The internet was flooded with horror videos... I saw almost everything. Unfortunately, I found the video of my son where you can see that my child is without this essential part of him.”
The location of the soldier’s head was revealed during a Shin Bet interrogation of two Hamas terrorists: “During the interrogation of two arrested terrorists the Shin Bet managed to realize that one of them tried to sell the head. A soldier's head for $10,000.”
The IDF located the sergeant’s severed head in an ice cream freezer in central Gaza City.
“Special forces, along with an armoured unit, entered the centre of Gaza, Palestine Square, inside an ice cream shop's freezer, inside a side bag with tennis balls and documents in it, was my son's head. They managed to bring back what was left, and we buried it.
“We recovered the bones, what they found, tested DNA, also found teeth, and buried him.”
Adir’s severed head was interred in a second burial, i24NEWS reported.
Adir Tahar's unimaginable fate echoes the circumstances surrounding the discovery of 23-year-old German Israeli Shani Louk's remains.
Louk's skull was found in Gaza weeks after she was murdered by Hamas. Israeli President Yitzchak Herzog condemned the perpetrators and said: “These barbaric, sadistic animals simply chopped off her head as they attacked, tortured and killed Israelis. It is a great tragedy and I extend my deepest condolences to her family.”
David Tahar spoke to Channel 14 about his late son. "The terrorists abused the body, they beheaded him and took him to Gaza. One of the terrorists tried to sell his head for 10 thousand dollars, it's just barbaric on a crazy level" (Channel 14)[Missing Credit] 