A Jerusalem man was arrested late last month on suspicion of attempting to murder his wife by injecting her with poison, allegedly due to her having male coworkers.
Following the lifting of a gag order on the case details, it was revealed that police discovered incriminating search results on the mobile phone of Eli Pereg, 49. Pereg’s wife, identified as A., claimed after the incident that her husband injected her with the substance "out of jealousy and obsessiveness," suspecting she was "working with men."
"I was feeding our granddaughter, and then he made me tea, but there were sleeping pills in it. I felt tired, and then he told my daughter-in-law to take the granddaughter," A. recounted the events of that night.
"We went to sleep, I lost consciousness and later the children found me convulsing, with a glass of bleach next to the bed. My body swelled up. My daughter said I screamed 'Eli, Eli.' I felt that he was the one who did it."
A. told Ynet that the poison injection damaged her spinal cord, and she is now undergoing rehabilitation. "I couldn't believe he could do such a thing," she said. "Who would believe that I would go to sleep with my husband, and he would inject poison into my back? Who would think of such an act? There is no precedent for this. He wrote to his friend, 'I want to set her on fire.'"
She added that she had to undergo spinal surgery and was hospitalized for a week in the neurosurgical clinic at Hadassah Medical Center. "Since I started working at the municipality, he became pathologically jealous," A. recounted, emphasizing that she did not believe her husband was capable of such an act. "I didn't see this happening; I didn't see it coming, and I certainly didn't think I would go to sleep and be stabbed in the back."
At a hearing held last month at the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court, a police representative said that several reports had been received over the past six months from various sources, alleging incidents of violence between the couple. "There is a suspicion that the respondent injected his partner with the substance found in her body, and this suspicion arose when a doctor at the hospital noticed a hematoma (bruise) on her body," the representative said. Pereg was remanded to custody multiple times, with police expected to request his detention be extended.
Pereg's public defender, Adv. Daniel Shimshilashvili, said, "My client denies all the allegations against him. Despite intensive investigations and severe violations of his basic rights during his detention, my client maintains his innocence. I am confident that in the end, my client's name will be cleared, and he will be released from detention soon."