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Police reccommend that President Moshe Katsav be indicted on suspicions of sex offenses
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| By Efrat Weiss October 15, 2006 |
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Another doubtful precedent was set Sunday afternoon, when for the first time the police recommend that the President of the State of Israel be indicted, including the grave charge of raping a female employee.
According to estimates, the investigation file will be transferred Sunday evening by the police to the State Prosecutor's Office, including a recommendation to put President Moshe Katsav on trial for sex offenses.
The investigation file against President Katsav contains not only suspicions of sexual offenses, but also infractions regarding suspicion of illegal wire-tapping and witness tampering. Police say evidence exists to support these latter charges, as well.
Major General Yohanan Danino, head of the police's investigation and intelligence department, and Brigadier General Yoav Segalovitch, head of the investigation team, arrived Sunday afternoon at Attorney General Menachem Mazuz's office in Jerusalem, where they also met with State Prosecutor Eran Shendar, and presented the investigation material to the two officials. The two also presented Mazuz with a recommendation to put the president on trial.
Upon entering the meeting, Major General Danino said that he would present the attorney general and the state prosecutor with the material, and at the end of the meeting an announcement will be made on the police's recommendation.
Ten women have filed complaints against the president, but the investigation file only refers to five of them, due to the limitation applying to the offenses Katsav is suspected of.
The police also used the evidence of the other five women in order to prove an alleged regular pattern of action exercised by the President.
President Katsav has been under criminal investigation since July, when a senior female aide complained she was sexually harassed while working under him. President Katsav filed a simultaneous complaint to the attorney general against the aide for extortion.
Sources close to the complainant (A.) denied Katsav's allegations stating that "she never asked him to get her a specific job."
Since then, the President has been questioned a number of times, and laid out his version of events, claiming that people are trying to frame him. Nonetheless, Katsav refrained from naming these people.
Great public pressure has been exerted to get the President to resign from office. As a result, he absented himself from the swearing in ceremony of Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch, appealing to the Knesset House Committee to grant him "temporary absence".
Now Katsav has a tougher dilemma: Should he continue fulfilling a public role at a time when police claim they have evidence that he has committed sexual offenses?
This article first appeared on Ynet.
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