A' - 'Rape victims shouldn't have to remember every date and detail'
Photo: Niv Calderon
Katsav - called complainant almost 700 times
Photo: Hagai Aharon
'Katsav called complainant 689 times'
Attorneys for complainant in Katsav rape case reveal new evidence from investigation in attempt to prevent High Court from sanctioning controversial plea bargain
Attorneys for A, the most prominent complainant against former president Moshe Katsav, have submitted new evidence to the High Court of Justice in an attempt to appeal the plea bargain offered to Katsav by the State.
'No Plea Bargain for Katsav'
Amnon Levy
Rape victims' accounts often contradictory; court must annul Katsav plea bargain
The evidence includes phone records proving Katsav made 689 calls to the complainant's personal phone. During that same time period A - who worked in the presidential residence - only made 19 calls to Katsav.
"The decision to close this case is plagued with such shocking weaknesses, certainly enough to question the reasonability of the attorney general's decision," said A's lawyers of Attorney General Menachem Mazuz's controversial offer to Katsav.
"It is clear that Mr Katsav would not have agreed to a plea bargain in which he confesses to the charges brought against him by the other two complainants while there exists even the theoretical possibility that another indictment would be filed against him on behalf of our client," they wrote.
As for Mazuz's claim that the case was closed due to contradictions in A's testimony, her lawyers said that victims of sexual assault should not be required to remember the dates and details of every event, nor should their testimony be "neat and tidy."
The attorneys wrote that the complainant believes that Mazuz himself felt there was something inappropriate about the matter and therefore chose to make a statement claiming that there is no connection between the plea bargain and the decision to close A's case.
Mazuz's behavior, said the lawyers, is completely unreasonable – and certainly merits the intervention of the High Court.
"When Haim Ramon's sentence is compared to the punishment suggested here – it's difficult to believe we're talking about the same prosecution in the same country," they wrote.
On Monday the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, The Israel Women's Network and various other social organizations petitioned the High Court regarding the State's rebuttal of petitions objecting Katsav's plea bargain.
The organizations claimed that the State failed to rebut the pivotal points made in the petitions, most of all those regarding the plea being "extremely unreasonable."
