Last update - 00:00 06/11/2006
Ramon attorneys: police's illegal wiretaps 'obstructed justice'
By Nir Hasson, Haaretz Correspondent
Attorneys for former justice minister Haim Ramon on Sunday accused the police and prosecution of "obstructing justice" in Ramon's sexual harassment case by, inter alia, conducting illegal wiretaps.
Ramon's trial will resume on Monday.
The prosecution has admitted to conducting wiretaps during Ramon's investigation, but says all were carried out legally.
However, Ramon's attorneys, Dan Sheinman and Navit Negev, charged that some of the wiretaps were carried out illegally.
The court order authorizing the wiretaps, issued by Tel Aviv District Court President Uri Goren on July 21, allowed the police to tap the phones of three people - the complainant, H., a female soldier; her commanding officer, L.; and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office manager, Shula Zaken - until midnight on July 23.
But a memorandum written on July 23 by Miri Golan, the head of the police team handling the probe, indicates that on July 20, a day before Goren issued the permit, the possibility of activating an existing wiretap immediately was discussed.
From this, Ramon's lawyers conclude that the police carried out an illegal wiretap a day before obtaining the court order.
The prosecution refused to comment on this claim on Sunday.
Last Thursday, however, Tel Aviv District Attorney Ruth David said wiretaps were conducted only on a single day, July 22, which was after the permit was issued. The police also insisted that the wiretaps were legal.
Ramon's lawyers claimed that Goren's order shows that the wiretaps were not merely part of a probe into alleged attempts to obstruct the Ramon investigation, as the prosecution said, but also related to the sexual harassment case itself.
The order cited "suspicions of suborning an investigation and indecent acts, perhaps forcible indecent acts."
When the prosecution finally admitted the wiretaps' existence last Thursday, after having initially denied them, its excuse for the concealment was that they related not to Ramon's case itself, but to a probe into suspected obstruction of justice.
But if the wiretaps also directly related to Ramon's case, his attorneys argued, then the prosecution had no justification for concealing this material from the defense.
Finally, the attorneys accused the police of concealing a vital piece of evidence from them, thereby undermining their ability to defend their client.
This information, which they received only four days ago - meaning after H. had already finished testifying in the trial - concerned a conversation between L., the complainant's commander, and the police, in which L. related a conversation she had with H.
In this conversation, L. said., H. told her that she had given her phone number to Ramon in the hope of obtaining a job with him upon her return from a trip abroad.
That, the attorneys claimed, strengthens Ramon's contention that his kiss with H. was consensual rather than forcible.
A Justice Ministry spokesman declined to respond to the attorneys' charges on Monday, saying, "All these claims belong in court, not in any other forum."