|
Katsav plea deal delayed
02/07/2007 13:16 - (SA)
Matti Friedman
Jerusalem - Israel's Supreme Court delayed a plea bargain that dropped rape charges against Israel's former president, leaving only minor infractions, and women's rights activists demanded that the court scuttle the deal.
The court ordered the state to defend its deal with Moshe Katsav, who stepped down as Israel's ceremonial leader on Sunday, allowing him to confess to sexual harassment and receive a suspended sentence. The court ruled that until it rules on the appeals, the plea bargain will not go forward. The state was to reply on Monday.
Outrage sprang from the contrast. In January, Israeli Attorney General Meni Mazuz said he was planning to file rape charges that could carry a 20-year prison term. Now, Katsav's critics fear the deal will allow him to fade quietly away, insisting he signed the deal only to relieve the strain on his family, with the gravest of the charges buried.
Four women who worked for Katsav charged that he repeatedly groped them, kissed them, exposed himself to them and - in two cases - raped them while he served as president and earlier, when he was tourism minister.
The allegations shocked Israelis by painting the country's symbolic head as a predatory boss who repeatedly used his authority over female employees to force sexual favours.
Katsav has claimed he was the victim of a witch hunt. He stepped aside in January to fight the charges but refused to resign until the plea bargain forced him to do so, two weeks before his term was due to end anyway.
Sunday's columns in Israeli papers slammed the deal with near unanimity. In a front page editorial, Amnon Dankner, editor of the Maariv daily, said it was "the truth that fell victim" in the plea bargain.
While seen as an unlikely scenario, the Supreme Court judges could declare that Mazuz's considerations in signing the plea bargain were unacceptable and send it back to be drafted anew, said Noya Rimalt, an expert on criminal law and feminist legal theory at Haifa University.
Public outcry may play a role
In announcing the plea bargain, Mazuz said one of his considerations was the reputation of the Israeli presidency and his desire to avoid a prolonged trial with painful headlines - a point Rimalt believes could be legally invalid and might provide a motive for the court to strike down the deal.
Even if the Supreme Court chooses to let the deal go ahead, a lower level court that has to approve it could decide that the sentence is too light, imposing a heavier one, Rimalt said.
The public outcry might also play a role, she said.
"Judges are not supposed to be affected by such things, but of course they're human beings," Rimalt said.
Framing the public protest is a slow evolution in Israeli public opinion, once tolerant of sexual misbehaviour by high ranking public figures, said Tziona Koenig-Yair, executive director of the Israel Women's Network, one of the three groups behind the Supreme Court appeals.
Israeli heroes like Moshe Dayan were reputedly notorious philanderers, an excess that the country's macho culture was willing to accept then. But that changed with the conviction of Yitzhak Mordechai, a former defence minister, for sexual assault in 2001, and continued with the conviction of former Cabinet minister Haim Ramon for sexual misconduct earlier this year.
"It's a change that has taken place over a decade or two, and especially in the last five years," Koenig-Yair said. "The public is tired of public officials who are supposed to represent them behaving in this way, and the Katsav case just crossed a line that people were not prepared to accept anymore."
As a former president, Katsav is supposed to have the government pay for an office, secretaries, and a car and driver - for life. Those benefits have also come under fire.
"It's inconceivable that he'll get an office, and two secretaries, and a driver and a car. It seems to me pretty dangerous for secretaries to work with a serial sex offender," lawmaker Zehava Galon told Channel 10 TV on Sunday.
|
News
