Likud and Meretz MKs have agreed on a bill for the good of the country – can Moshiach be far behind?
Meretz MK Mossi Raz and Likud MK Shlomo Karhi on Thursday submitted a bill to allow the government and the State Audit Committee to appoint a special prosecutor with extensive powers to investigate the Calcalist report that Israel Police used NSO’s Pegasus spyware to track, without a court order, politicians, senior businessmen, CEOs of government ministries, mayors, executives of giant corporations, journalists, organizers of protests of almost every kind, advisers to the prime minister and his family, political activists, the disabled, and Ethiopians (Report: Israel Police Infected EVERYBODY with NSO’s Pegasus Since 2014).
MK Kahri tweeted on Thursday: Who will investigate the investigators? In collaboration with MK Mossi Taz, we have submitted a bill calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor by the State Audit Committee, with extensive investigation, arrest, and indictment powers. The spying affair requires us to conduct an independent, in-depth and comprehensive investigation. Only an external examiner will be able to get to the root of the matter without fear and prejudice.
MK Raz tweeted on Thursday: I submitted with MK Shlomo Karhi a bill that would allow the government and the State Audit Committee to appoint a special prosecutor with extensive powers The NSO upheaval makes it clear to us: the police cannot investigate themselves. Appointing a special prosecutor is the only way to produce a body that will investigate this affair in the most comprehensive, transparent, and objective way possible.
Meanwhile, on Thursday morning, former Haifa District Court Judge Moshe Gilad told Radio 104.5FM that the scandal could delay former PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial by a year, to allow for a thorough probe into police tactics in their investigations of the three cases Netanyahu is facing.
Gilad also suggested the possibility that “if the mass will be so great, and it turns out that they listened to [state witnesses] Nir Hefetz, [Arnon] Milchan, and his assistant, it could be that the court will determine that each and every one of them has been contaminated, which infringes on individual freedoms and therefore the trial should be canceled.” But the former judge added that this option is less reasonable than delaying the trial.
Former Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh, during whose term in office most of the alleged violations took place, on Wednesday denied the veracity of the Calcalist reports. “Although I’ve been outside Israel Police for more than three years, as someone who knew the system closely, I did not doubt that the image that was published is not real,” he said. But a considerable list of his former colleagues have been describing his stint in office to the media as rife with irregularities, blaming his behavior on the fact that his formative service has been in the Shin Bet, Israel’s clandestine police force.
