Netanyahu’s attorneys call for dismissal of indictments following police’s ‘criminal’ misconduct
Severe illegal courses of action were taken by the police when they conducted their investigations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, necessitating the dismissal of the indictments, Netanyahu’s lawyers told the Jerusalem District Court.
PM Netanyahu during the Cabinet meeting. (Haim Zach/GPO)
Boaz Ben Tsur and Amit Hadad, the prime minister’s attorneys submitted to the court on Sunday some 200 pages alleging that Netanyahu was marked by the legal system and improper and criminal measures were used during the investigation, including the contamination of the investigations and selective enforcement.
The document claims that in Netanyahu’s investigations, criminal acts were committed on “an unprecedented scale.”
“The way the investigations were conducted indicates that at an early stage the investigators realized that the Prime Minister did not commit any offence, so they did not investigate an offence, but invented an offence and then committed criminal acts to prove it,” the attorneys charged.
“These criminal acts are not acceptable in any investigation, let alone in the investigation of a prime minister, and therefore the indictment should be dismissed,” they demanded of the court.
The allegations include accusations that police investigators lied to the court and obtained a search warrant intended to reveal details unrelated to the investigation in order to threaten a suspect who later signed a state witness agreement.
Furthermore, the witnesses in the case were subjected to unprecedented criminal pressure to lie, including threats of harm to their family and children, denial of rights, harassment, denial of medical care, refusal to write their versions and many other wrongdoings.
Any direction of investigation that did not reconcile with the allegation in the cases was completely ignored, the attorneys said.
The prime minister’s investigations have been “polluted in an unprecedented way” through hundreds of leaks from the police and the prosecutor’s office, they said.
These leaks were not investigated or dealt with by the Attorney General, who refused to do so.
They also said that the interrogation transcripts were distorted by the investigators. The files contained dozens of examples of dramatic gaps between the transcripts of the interrogations and the summary of the interrogations made by the investigators, in order to reach the desired results for them.
The attorneys also pointed to “selective enforcement” for the lack of any investigation against ministers and Knesset members who received sympathetic news coverage, allegedly a form of bribery.
The attorneys stated that their request “details a long list of serious failures and defects committed during the investigation process in the Prime Minister’s case.”
“These are completely improper investigative moves, endless leaks – hundreds in the number of investigative materials, in violation of the law, and a public trial in the media before the trial begins,” they charged.
“In a proper state, law enforcement agencies must adhere to principles of justice and fairness during an investigation. In our opinion, the total accumulation of serious defects should lead to the conclusion of dismissing the indictment,” they concluded.
Netanyahu is facing charges in three corruption cases involving bribery and breach of trust.
Netanyahu has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and calls the allegations a witch hunt by a “hostile media” against him and his family and an attempt by left-wing officials to influence the outcome of the elections.
