Rumor: Ex-President Katzav Committed Suicide

The prisoner and former president of Israel Moshe Katzav is alive and well in his cell in Maasiahu prison, where he is serving a 7-year sentence. But all day Thursday, the Israeli Prisons Authority was flooded with phone call from reporters in Israel and abroad, asking for information about his untimely death.

A spokesperson for the authority calmed the callers down, insisting this was merely a rumor. It turns out that once every few weeks, someone spreads a rumor that the former president has had enough and took his own life. Except that this time, according to the spokesperson, the rumor had spread around the world.

A high ranking prison officer told Maariv there hadn't even been any unusual event in the former president's cell block in recent days.