Last update - 00:00 28/11/2006
Justice Ministry to reveal partial details of Katsav pardons affair
By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondent
The Justice Ministry will reveal partial information from a pardons process involving President Moshe Katsav in which irregularities are suspected to have occurred, the Jerusalem Administrative Court ruled on Tuesday.
The court's decision follows an agreement reached between the Movement for Freedom of Information and the Justice Ministry. The movement submitted its petition on the matter after a Haaretz request to the Justice Ministry and to the President's Residence for access to the information was denied.
The court ruled that "the pardons department in the Justice Ministry will produce and transfer to the petitioners within 90 days detailed print outs of all pardons requests submitted in the years 2004 and 2005."
The exposure of information will be restricted, although the agreement between the two sides rules that "all personal information identifying the applicants will be erased from the transferred print outs." Justice Ministry recommendations regarding the pardons will also be absent from the print outs.
The petition was submitted after the supervisor in charge of freedom of information in the Justice Ministry, attorney Yael Cottick, refused to grant information from the pardons process.
The Movement for Freedom of Information said it welcomed the court's ruling. The group's director general, Roey Peled, said "it is not surprising that the Justice Ministry and the President's Residence would prefer that all information regarding pardons were to stay obstructed from the general public. But public interest in the exposure of information with regard to the presidential pardons police is tremendous. It is a shame that the Justice Ministry did not understand that we all have a basic right to view this material."
"Gone are the days when government clerks were able to ignore the right of the citizen to receive public information of interest to them," Peled added. "The authorities have still not internalized this new reality, but this type of ruling will accustom the authorities to see in citizens a part of the government, and to relinquish in advance excuses to obstruct access to information."