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Israel delays president sex offender case
Posted: 01 July 2007 1845 hrs
Israel's Attorney General Menachem Mazuz
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JERUSALEM: Israel's high court on Sunday ordered a delay on president Moshe Katsav being indicted for sex offences, demanding the attorney general justify a much criticised plea bargain dropping rape charges.
The decision was made after furious women's groups and the Movement for Quality Government lodged an appeal against the deal cut by Katsav, under which he admitted guilt for lesser sex offences but was spared two rape charges and a possible jail term.
"The high court gave (Attorney General Menachem) Mazuz 24 hours to justify the plea bargain reached with Mr Katsav," said a justice ministry spokesman just minutes before a Jerusalem magistrate was to open an indictment hearing.
"The Katsav case cannot be brought before the magistrate's court until Mazuz has responded," the spokesman added.
Katsav, a 61-year-old father of five, on Thursday signed a deal in which he admitted to a series of sex offences, including harassment and indecent acts. But two rape charges were dropped, meaning he escaped a possible jail term.
Mazuz has faced a public backlash over the deal – slammed by women's groups and victims of sex attacks at a public demonstration attracting 20,000 people in Tel Aviv late on Sunday – for being too lenient with Katsav.
Under the terms, Katsav agreed to a suspended prison sentence and a fine of 11,000 dollars but dodged jail and rape charges, which appeared in the initial charge sheet handed by police to the state prosecution last January.
He nonetheless risks becoming the first president in Israeli history who is a convicted sex offender.
The appeal lodged at the high court criticised what women's groups, a plaintiff against Katsav and the Movement for Quality Government slammed an "amoral" deal "contrary to public interest".
"This deal is a mistake and was concluded after Mr Mazuz came under very heavy pressure," Labour party MP Shelly Yacimovich told public radio. "Katsav is a serial sex offender and the beneficary of preferential treatment."
On Saturday, Mazuz himself described Katsav as a "serial sex offender" but said the state decided to drop rape charges filed by several women due to a lack of "sufficiently solid evidence".
The first plaintiff against Katsav, known only as "A" who worked for the president when he was tourism minister in the late 1990s, on Sunday spoke on army radio in her second interview since the scandal broke.
"He went after me for six months with compliments, passionate declarations, presents, promises and inappropriate gestures, veiled threatens to make me give in... It was pathetic," she said.
Several initiatives are now being made in parliament with a view to stripping Israeli officials found guilty of crimes and misdemeanours of their privileges. Immunity spared Katsav prosecution while he was in office.
The unpopular president leaves office after seven-year term about two weeks before Nobel peace laureate Shimon Peres is officially sworn in as his successor, having been elected Israel's ninth president this month.
The Iranian-born Katsav is Israel's second consecutive president to be forced out of the largely ceremonial office owing to scandal.
His predecessor, the late Ezer Weizman, resigned in 2000 after revelations that he received around 450,000 dollars from a French millionaire while a minister and an MP.
- AFP/so
Israel delays president sex offender case 
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