Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara will not appear in court at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial, the prosecution told the Jerusalem District Court on Wednesday. The announcement rejects a suggestion raised by the judges last week.
Prosecutor Yehudit Tirosh said the case is handled by the prosecution team and senior officials in the State Attorney’s Office, and that a personal appearance by the attorney general is not in keeping with standard prosecution procedure. “The attorney general operates in prosecution cases, including this important case, in an orderly manner, and according to this process the prosecutors on her behalf are certainly authorized in this case,” she said.
“A situation in which the attorney general comes to court when the prosecution team is here and senior officials of the State Attorney’s Office is a process that is not correct from the standpoint of the working procedures of the prosecution system in Israel,” Tirosh added.
The issue arose at a hearing last Thursday, when the defense teams for Netanyahu and co-defendant Shaul Elovitch asked to summon the attorney general over alleged flaws in the investigation. Judge Oded Shaham responded that the panel had already been considering direct dialogue with Baharav-Miara, since she is ultimately responsible for the case. “The defense may have pushed against an open door, because we considered such a move even before,” he said. He added that no decision had been made.
Tirosh told the court that the prosecution team updates the attorney general regularly on developments in the trial, including the judges’ remarks, and that these “are always examined with gravity.” She said the deputy state attorney is expected to attend hearings in the coming weeks as the prosecution’s most senior representative.
Tirosh stressed that the refusal to appear did not mean a refusal to negotiate. “If the court is directing toward the path of agreement or arrangement, this is an opportunity to remind again that the doors of the attorney general and the state attorney remain open to direct dialogue,” she said.
She noted that the attorney general had previously refused mediation, but said the prosecution had responded to a request from President Isaac Herzog after extensive internal discussions. “The defendant chose not to respond to the president’s request,” she said, adding that the prosecution’s positive response had been “left hanging in the air.”
Netanyahu’s attorney, Amit Hadad, argued that the court has the authority to summon the attorney general even if she does not wish to come. “The fact that the attorney general doesn’t want to come here, it’s certainly possible to summon her,” he said. He noted that the Supreme Court recently summoned the state attorney to a hearing, and said that issues no less important had come up in this case.
The court has not yet decided whether to summon the attorney general.
