Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Judicial Unrest: Minister, Judge Attack Police, Prosecution


Gil Ronen

Tensions within the justice and law enforcement system mounted Tuesday as Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann and retiring District Court Judge Sheli Timen separately expressed sharp criticism of the police and prosecution.

Minister Friedmann tore into the police and prosecution for the wiretaps they carried out in the investigation carried out against then-Justice Minister Chaim Ramon in 2006. The suspicions against Ramon involved a kiss between him and a female soldier, which the soldier later claimed involved improper behavior by Ramon. Friedmann spoke before a Knesset committee of inquiry established to investigate the matter of the wiretaps in the Ramon trial.Wiretaps and pressure
The police carried out wiretaps on the soldier's phone and a senior female police officer. Supt. Miri Golan met with the soldier and pressured her to testify against Ramon. The prosecution did not inform Ramon's defense attorneys of the wiretaps and initially did not turn over some of the wiretap transcripts despite being instructed to do so by the court.

Friedmann said Tuesday that Ramon's misbehavior was a much less serious matter than the way the case was handled by the authorities. "The wiretap affair is harsh and serious," he said. "There is an uncompromising struggle by the entire legal system against the investigation. Inside the ministry there is very fie
Friedmann: "Ramon's misbehavior was a much less serious matter than the way the case was handled by the authorities."
rce opposition: one must not touch, one must not investigate."

Committee of inquiry
"The situation is unbearable," Friedmann told the committee Tuesday. "I am convinced that there is no choice but to establish a governmental committee of inquiry with authority because if it does not have authority, the matter will be made to fade away… We have a justice system which you would expect to be prepared for some kind of meaningful supervision process and I do not feel this is so," Friedmann explained.

Friedmann accused Attorney General Menachem Mazuz of doing "all within his power" to block Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's initiative to appoint a committee of inquiry to investigate the wiretaps. Public Security Minister Avi Dichter also refused to conduct an investigation of the matter, Friedmann said.

He added: "It turns out that when the wiretaps dig up evidence that is in favor of the accused and not against him, these materials are not passed on…"

Confessed to murder, acquitted
Meanwhile, a Tel Aviv District Judge, Sheli Timen, attacked the police and prosecution in an unu
Timen: "Police and prosecution are covering up their own misdeeds in the case by mounting personal attacks."
sual and controversial verdict Monday which acquitted a man named Alexei Volkov who had been charged with murdering his ex-wife Yulia in 2006, despite a confession and re-enactment the man had given the police. The verdict, which was given by a panel of judges headed by Timen, determined that the police investigation was sloppy and that there was no way of knowing what had happened in the deceased's apartment on the day she was killed.

The judges determined that the police saw Volkov as the exclusive suspect in the case and neglected all other directions of investigation, "ignored warning lights" and showed carelessness in collecting evidence. The police ignored evidence implicating Yulia's boyfriend and did not interrogate him properly, preferring instead to wear down Volkov and make him fit his version of events to the police's evidence.

'Judge Timen is strange'
Sources within the prosecution called Timen "strange" and accused him of overstepping his role by criticizing them in his verdict. Timen said in response that the police and prosecution are covering up their own misdeeds in the case by mounting personal attacks on him.

In an interview he gave Haaretz two months ago, Timen said that judges were afraid of the feminist lobby and regularly issued guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual allegations. "A person charged with sexual offenses will almost certainly go to jail, and his family will be destroyed," Timen said. "And if there is a false complaint, G-d forbid – it doesn't matter. That is the atmosphere today. They mob you after every 'innocent' verdict."

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