Last update - 00:00 30/10/2007
Beinisch: Katsav plea bargain's "feat" is lack of reference to sex crime
By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondent
The High Court Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch said on Tuesday in an implied criticism of former president Moshe Katsav's plea bargain, that "the amended indictment has no sexual reference, which is its biggest achievement."
She said that "Katsav's attorney, Avigdor Feldman, said that the former president would admit he hugged the complainant [known as "A."] and touched her leg. This is not a downright sexual situation."
Beinisch spoke during a hearing on six requests to quash the plea bargain, reached last June with Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, under which Katsav agreed to plead guilty to sexual harassment, forcible indecent assault and harassing a witness - but not the rape that a former employee accused him of committing.
Mazuz wrote that allegations made by the complainant were undermined by contradictions in her story and by evidence that she may have been motivated by "obsessive jealousy" of a fellow employee, creating a reasonable doubt that the former president was innocent and should not be charged with rape.
Beinisch also insinuated during Tuesday's hearing that the state prosecution failed to carry out its legal duty to set up a final indictment before the hearing. Only when the prosecution's position is changed significantly following a hearing, she said, a revised indictment can be written up.
Justice Ayala Procaccia asked the prosecution attorney, Shai Nitzan, whether Katsav had enjoyed a higher evidential threshold than the common standard, which is "a balance of probability" that would lead to conviction. Nitzan declined her allegations, saying that "the president and the ordinary citizen are equal before the law."
Beinisch said that the current version of the indictment does not contain "claims of touching the complainant's private parts, only her knee." Nitzan replied that the prosecution believes that "the core of the allegations is not the rape itself but the fact that the complainant was persistently harassed. The final version does not include rape allegations. A plea bargain requires the consent of two parties."
At the outset of the Tuesday hearing, Beinish, speaking for the court, rejected a request by Katsav's attorneys to lift a gag order over evidence in the case.
Petitioners have condemned as "extremely unreasonable" the prosecution's statements that it lacked detailed testimony from 10 complainants whose accusations are said to support the contention that Katsav is a serial sex offender.
The petitioners have also argued that the complainants were not given a chance for a fair hearing over the terms of the bargain and that the former president received preferential treatment. They have furher accused Katsav of violating the plea bargain, citing comments by the former president and his family that appear to indicate he is evading responsibility for all the sexual offenses of which he is accused.
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