Last update - 00:00 06/12/2006
Sela probe panel likely not to recommend disciplinary action against top brass
By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent
The committee investigating the escape of serial rapist Benny Sela from police custody is unlikely to recommend disciplinary action against senior police officers, people involved in the committee's work predicted on Tuesday.
The committee, headed by Amos Yaron, will apparently only demand action against those officers directly responsible for the scandalous performance of the Tel Aviv District's prisoner escort unit, the sources said.
This, they added, would involve officers only up to the level of a district intelligence officer.
According to the sources, indications of the committee members' intentions could be seen in their meetings with Police Commissioner Moshe Karadi and the head of the Israel Prisons Service, Ya'akov Ganot: While other witnesses were summoned to the committee's meeting room, committee members met with Karadi on Tuesday afternoon in the latter's office, and described the meeting as a "conversation" rather than the taking of testimony.
Moreover, the meeting lasted less than an hour, and was devoted mainly to the issue of transferring responsibility for escorting prisoners to and from the courthouse from the police to the Prisons Service. The meeting with Ganot also focused mainly on this issue.
Inter alia, committee members wanted to know why responsibility for escorting prisoners had not long since been transferred completely from the police to the Prisons Service's Nachshon Unit, which currently handles only a minority of such cases, but has a much better track record.
Public Security Minister Avi Dichter had already decided that this should be done, and the handover was originally slated to take place this coming summer. However, the committee is widely expected to recommend that the transfer of responsibility be sped up.
One of the main problems with an accelerated transfer is how the police could find other jobs in time for the approximately 800 policemen currently serving in the prisoner escort unit.
In private conservations, Karadi said this week that responsibility for Sela's flight rested solely with the guards from whose custody he escaped, and the committee should not blame senior officers.
Had the two guards followed the police's written procedures, Karadi argued, the escape would not have been possible. In fact, the two broke almost every rule in the book, and they are widely expected to be dismissed.
However, it seems that some of the officers above them will also be removed from their current jobs.
The committee is also expected to draft clear and uniform instructions for prisoner escorts that would obligate police guards until the Prisons Service takes over this job.
The committee is also investigating the erroneous notice of a labor court hearing that led to Sela's removal from prison on Friday, November 24, even though the labor court does not meet on Fridays.
The committee wants to know whether this notice was due merely to clerical error, or whether it stemmed from a broader problem in the court's computer system.