Last update - 00:00 01/07/2007
Petitions submitted to High Court delay hearing on Katsav plea deal
By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondent
The High Court of Justice agreed Sunday to delay a hearing on the plea bargain that saw rape charges dropped from an indictment against former president Moshe Katsav for sex crimes, in order to hear a legal challenge to the deal.
The hearing will be postponed by at least 24 hours.
The court gave Attorney General Menachem Mazuz until Monday afternoon to respond to two petitions filed by women's rights groups, asking the court to issue an interim order to stop the approval process of the plea bargain that ensured Katsav would not go to prison for a series of sex offenses.
"The extreme lack of reasonableness in [Attorney General Menachem] Mazuz's decision," the petition states, "stems from the fact that he backtracked on his original intention to indict the president with more serious accusations, including rape and serious indecent acts."
The petitions also stated that the decision was made "without the Attorney General receiving new evidence that could destroy the evidentiary basis that led him shortly beforehand to decide to issue the indictment, including very serious charges."
The petitions were submitted by the Movement for Quality Government; the Israel Women's Network; Itach, a women's social action association; and the umbrella organization The Women's Coalition.
A third petition was submitted to the High Court by one of the main complainants in the case, A., whose rape accusations were deleted from Katsav's indictment. In her petition, A. seeks to include the crimes allegedly committed against her in the future indictment.
Meanwhile, Israel Radio reported Sunday that the State Prosecution is expected to submit its indictment Sunday morning.
As the agreed draft is scheduled to be presented in court, the Justice Ministry has come under pressure to release the January 23 draft indictment against Katsav, citing the original charges Attorney General Menachem Mazuz had planned to include before Katsav's hearing and the subsequent plea bargain, a Justice Ministry official said Saturday.
However, Mazuz refused a request made by Haaretz Saturday to release the draft indictment now, in order to publicly reveal the extent of the concessions the State Prosecutor's office made to Katsav during negotiations over the plea bargain.
Katsav tendered his resignation Friday to Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik in a letter that made no mention of the criminal case. "My term in office ends according to law on July 14, 2007. However, I request to move up the end of my term by two weeks and announce my resignation." Katsav's resignation is to take effect this morning. Immediately thereafter the Jerusalem State Prosecutor's office will issue the amended indictment to the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court.
An individual who participated in the negotiations for the plea bargain said State Prosecutor Eran Shendar was opposed to the deal with Katsav, since Shendar insisted that the proper sentence should be imprisonment.
However, the Justice Ministry spokesman on Saturday said the state prosecutor denied this was the case, and stated that the ministry's entire senior staff had agreed on the need to sign the agreement. A third party involved in the negotiations said Shendar had not objected, but had instead been actively involved in the agreement's details.
Both Mazuz and Shendar warned Katsav over the weekend that if he did not confess unequivocably in court to the offenses in the amended indictment, the deal would be off. In such a case the original indictment might be invoked, including two rape charges.
"Outside the courtroom anybody can say what they want," Mazuz told Channel 2's "Meet the Press," "but if the president does not stand before the court and say clearly that he confesses, there will be no deal. An indecent act is not a hug or a caress," he said.
"The court will find out from the accused whether he understands what he is confessing to and if it is clear to him that he will be convicted of a crime."
Mazuz added that, "We met with the president and made it clear to him that there is an individual who has for years behaved like a serial sexual offender. But the greatest difficulty is the offenses to which the statue of limitations applies."
In interviews to Army Radio and Israel Radio, Shendar said, "If Katsav does not stand before the court and say that, indeed, for more than a year he committed the acts described in the indictment, but instead states that he wants to make things easier for his family and that these things never happened, there will be no plea bargain."