AG's Katsav decision criticized by peers

Senior members of the legal community expressed outrage from the plea bargain signed Thursday between Attorney General Menachem Mazuz and suspended president Moshe Katsav.

"The decision is a complete failure for the Attorney General's office, because even if his decision was appropriate, it showed the attorney general – as someone who fanned the flames of the affair on national television - as less than credible. It's as if he needed the defense attorneys to see that he does not have enough evidence against Katsav," a senior source told Ynet.

"What will the average person say, who is not eligible for a hearing and cannot afford high-priced lawyers? Mazuz judged this case without allowing the true judicial system to examine it," the source said.

"The consideration of preserving the presidential office is irrelevant and illegitimate in this case. The High Court should intervene in this matter," he added.

Professor Ariel Bendor of the Haifa University fails to see the reasoning behind Mazuz's decision. "It is unclear as to what prompted the attorney general to agree to this plea. I'm not familiar with the specifics of this case, so I can't say whether or not there was new evidence involved.

"Furthermore– if there was no new evidence in the case and he agreed to plea merely because Katsav made the offer, then there is even a greater gap between the original indictment to the one which generated this plea."

"We must remember the courts are not obligated to accept this plea," said Bendor. "Should the court decide there are sufficient differences between the original indictment and the revised one, it does not have to accept the plea.

"The court must first find the confession believable. If the court finds that Katsav pleaded guilty simply to get it over with it can dismiss the plea," he said. 

'Mazuz can be blamed for misogyny'

"The attorney general socked the public by going from talking about having allegedly damning evidence that support rape charges against Katsav to a plea bargain convicting him of two count of sexual misconduct," said Dr Orit Kamir, of the Hebrew university in Jerusalem.

Mazuz, she said can "now be blamed for being a misogynist, for getting cold feet, for being spineless and corrupt...Maybe it's just his lack of experience in prosecuting sex cases showing. I'd go with the latter," she added.

The results of Mazuz's conduct, she said, may have grave implications: "The charges brought against Katsav were never put to the test in a court of law. The public in rightfully outraged that what appeared to start as a brutal rape case – and was given non-stop media attention as that – ends up as a sexual misconduct pleas bargain."

Nonetheless, Kamir emphasized that this is not the heart of the matter. "We must not, under any circumstances, focus on Mazuz' behavior, because the main issues is not the attorney-general's professional behavior, but rather Katsav's admission to sexual misconduct," she said.