Last update - 00:00 30/11/2006
Video technology would have kept rapist Sela in jail
By Lior Haner
The whole country has been in an uproar this week, not because of Qassam rockets or Katyusha missiles, but because of a rapist who escaped custody while being brought by the police to a court hearing. The police and prison service have been bitterly exchanging accusations, but the truth is that a simple legislative proposal that's been smoldering for years awaiting enactment in law would have prevented the whole fiasco.
With videoconferencing technology, courts could hold frontal hearings of prisoners directly from prison. Not only would it have prevented embarrassing escapes like that of Benny Sela. It would also save the high cost of transferring prisoners under guard from jail to court.
The reason for the delay in enactment boils down to - as is often the case - foot-dragging in Knesset committees and opposition by the Bar Association.
The Justice Ministry proposal to use videoconferencing technology for hearings on remand extensions has been on the Knesset's agenda since 2004.
The bill was the brainchild of an interministerial panel established at the behest of the Public Security and Justice Ministries. It also comprised representatives from the Internal Security Ministry, the police, the courts, the Bar Association, the Public Defender's Office, the Prisons Authority and more.
Although the bill did pass its first reading before the previous Knesset, it was never brought before the proper House sub-committee. And that is why it's still stuck on the agenda, explains attorney Drora Nahmani-Roth, an adviser on criminal law at the Justice Ministry.
Nahmani-Roth says the plan is to start with a pilot, apparently at the Abu Kabir prison. The pilot would cost NIS 1.5 million, and be used when the police is motioning the court to extend remand by a few days.
"There will be some preconditions for using the system. The prisoner must be adult and accompanied by a lawyer, and must consent to it," Nahmani-Roth says.
Justice hopes the pilot will go well and that once studied thoroughly, the system can be extended to other types of hearings, naturally all with the consent of the prisoner, who would always have to be represented. That would certainly be one solution for people like Sela, who nagged the system with countless motions and who was transported to court each time.
Clearly elements of the system are sound, but the Bar Association firmly opposes it.
"The Bar Association views the entire criminal process, including the part regarding the hearing on the arrest, as a highly sensitive one in which the most fundamental rights of civilians come up for discussion," the Bar Association explains, and such hearings have always been held in the presence of the suspect or prisoner. "Any erosion of that principle would constitute real harm to basic rights, especially in the case of people in distress."
To which Nahmani-Roth rebuts: "When consent exists, there is no issue of rights."
Several videoconferencing technology companies are following the matter with keen eyes. "Back in 2003 we tried to interest the law enforcement authorities in systems, based on the company's experience abroad," says Dan Engel, Israel sales manager for Polycom, which makes videoconferencing technology.
The justice minister at the time was Yosef Lapid, and he liked the idea. They talked about a pilot in a Ramle prison, for use in hearings to extend remand, or hearings in the cases of dangerous prisoners. In fact, Engel points out, the system is already in use: in the very case of rape, to confront victim and accused, without putting them in the same room.