The parents of Haymanot Kasau asked Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief David Zini on Monday to take over the investigation into their daughter’s disappearance, 911 days after the nine-year-old vanished from the absorption center where her family lived in Safed.
In a letter sent Monday morning, Tesfaye and Benchi Kasau also asked to meet Zini personally and walk him through what they describe as failures in the investigation, saying they have waited more than two and a half years without an answer as to what happened to their daughter.
“For 911 days, we have been waiting and hoping for our daughter Haymanot to return,” they wrote. “Today, Israel Police has no information, direction, or theory as to what happened to our daughter.”
Haymanot disappeared on the evening of February 25, 2024, after returning from school and spending time with friends around the Jewish Agency absorption center in Safed. She was nine years old at the time.
Security cameras captured her near the entrance to the center shortly before she disappeared.
Her parents have consistently maintained that she was abducted. Police, however, continue to treat her as a missing person, and an abduction has not been established.
Latest in a series of attempts to involve Shin Bet
Monday’s letter is the latest in a series of attempts by the family to bring the Shin Bet directly into the case.
At a Knesset committee hearing marking two years since Haymanot disappeared in February, her father asked for the case to be transferred to the security agency, arguing that it has investigative capabilities beyond those available to police.
The family repeated that demand at protests in the months that followed.
The investigation was transferred from the Northern District to the police’s Lahav 433 National Crime Unit in December 2025, after Police Commissioner Daniel Levy ordered the national unit to take over the case. A dedicated team was subsequently established to reinvestigate the disappearance.
A possible breakthrough emerged that month when police investigated whether a 63-year-old Beersheba man suspected of offenses against another girl had also been involved in Haymanot’s disappearance. That avenue ultimately collapsed, with police determining that he was not connected to the case.
Months later, there is still no publicized breakthrough, as the family has continued to say that the Shin Bet has not meaningfully entered the case and is now asking Zini to assume direct responsibility.
That demand has intensified following several recent missing-person cases that ended with those missing being found.
Four-year-old Yuval Kogan found after Shin Bet assisted search
In July, four-year-old Yuval Kogan was found alive after disappearing near the Ashkelon coast and spending roughly a day alone outdoors.
Police had asked the Shin Bet to assist in the search, and the agency was among the bodies involved in the effort.
Haymanot’s parents publicly welcomed his return while questioning why the same resources had not produced an answer in their daughter’s case.
Later that month, the Kasau family again protested and demanded greater Shin Bet involvement.
The comparison resurfaced last week after Mali and Liel Yahalomi, an Israeli mother and daughter who disappeared during a trip to Europe, were located alive in Argentina following an international search led by Lahav 433 with foreign law enforcement agencies.
Haymanot’s family again congratulated the family while asking why the same police unit had managed to trace the two women across continents while their daughter’s case remained unresolved.
In Monday’s letter, the Kasau parents said seeing other families reunited had brought both relief and renewed pain.
“We breathed a sigh of relief for other families,” they wrote, before asking that Haymanot’s case finally be transferred to the Shin Bet.
They are now asking Zini for an urgent face-to-face meeting, saying they want to personally lay out the history of an investigation that has lasted over 900 days without bringing their daughter home.