Last update - 00:00 14/02/2007
Katsav lawyer to MKs: Move to oust president is inappropriate
By Yuval Yoaz and Gideon Alon, Haaretz Correspondents
A lawyer for Moshe Katsav on Wednesday blasted a move to oust the president over possible rape charges, calling it "inappropriate" and executed in the style of a field court martial.
Zion Amir was addressing the Knesset House Committee, which met Wednesday morning to begin a process that could end in Katsav's removal from office.
Amir attended the panel meeting despite informing committee chair MK Ruhama Avraham on Monday that neither of the president's lawyers would attend the first two sessions.
"It is inconceivable," Katsav's lawyers wrote Avraham on Monday, "that even before the president is able to present his arguments to the attorney general, he should have to present his defense, including presenting evidence, witnesses, depositions and legal arguments, before the Israel Knesset, a body that does not have jurisdiction over the state's legal system.
"This is a scandalous and terrible kind of 'kangaroo court' that is liable to harm the president's rights as president and as a citizen. It is an act that is liable to be interpreted as frivolous, populist and beneath the Knesset's dignity."
On Tuesday, however, Amir announced that he would attend the House Committee meeting.
The committee decided at the end of the meeting to invite Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to next meeting, which will take place in seven days, in order to explain the exact charges facing Katsav and the timetable of events leading up to a final decision on whether to indict him and to give his opinion on dismissing the president.
Mazuz has said, however, that he would be unable to provide the committee with any details about the suspicions against the president beyond the announcement he made last month regarding his intention to indict him, subject to the outcome of an April hearing in which Katsav will be able to present his case.
The House Committee deliberations are expected to take three to four weeks, after which a vote will be taken. Removing the president from office requires a 75 percent majority (19 of the panel's 25 MKs), which supporters of the move do not have at present.
Amir and Feldman are expected to tell Mazuz later this week that they need about six weeks to study the evidence and prepare their arguments for the hearing. The hearing would thus take place after the judicial system returns from its Passover break but before Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Mazuz is expected to agree to this time frame. The Justice Ministry previously indicated that Mazuz was ready to hold the hearing immediately, but it is clear that the president's legal team needs some preparation time.
Mazuz is expected to announce his final decision on whether or not to indict Katsav within two weeks after the hearing. If an indictment if forthcoming, the president will have to resign permanently, in accordance to his promise to the High Court of Justice, unless he has either quit or been forced out before then.
In the hearing, Katsav's lawyers will try to convince Mazuz that the evidence does not warrant an indictment at all, or at least not on the most serious charges - rape, sexual relations involving an abuse of power and sexual assault. They do not, however, intend to propose any type of plea bargain, since that would involve admitting to at least some of the sexual misconduct charges.
A source close to Katsav who has seen the draft indictment said that he was "surprised at the seriousness of the charges laid out in the indictment." He attributed the surprise, which he said was shared by other associates of the president who had seen the document, to the gap between what they had expected, based on what they knew about the case, and what the indictment actually included, as well as to the fact that the indictment's severity seemed to contradict the opinion of several government prosecutors involved in the case.