(Tel Aviv) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in the Tel Aviv courtroom on Tuesday for the resumption of his corruption trial and to respond to accusations and testimonies.
Posted at 7:08 a.m.
Sharon ARONOWICZ
Agence France-Presse
Mr. Netanyahu is the first serving Israeli head of government to be tried criminally for corruption, fraud and breach of trust.
Tuesday’s hearing marks the resumption of the trial which opened in May 2020.
The trial was interrupted by the war in the Gaza Strip, with Mr. Netanyahu having filed several requests for postponement citing the hostilities triggered by the attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on October 7, 2023, and still ongoing.
“I will speak” in court, “I am not fleeing,” assured Mr. Netanyahu during a press conference Monday evening. “I have been waiting for eight years for this day, eight years that I want to present the truth, eight years that I wait to completely demolish these absurd and unfounded accusations against me,” he added.
Opponents of Mr. Netanyahu and supporters of the prime minister gathered in front of the court building on Tuesday, while deputies from the right-wing government coalition came to attend the hearing which is taking place in an underground room for security reasons. security.
An AFP journalist present in front of the court reported that the prime minister’s supporters chanted “Netanyahu, the people support you”, while opponents, who have been organizing demonstrations against him for months, chanted “Bibi in prison”, the nickname of the Prime Minister.
260 000 dollars
In the first case, Mr. Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, are accused of accepting more than $260,000 worth of luxury goods (cigars, jewelry, champagne) from billionaires, including the original Hollywood producer Israeli Arnon Milchan and Australian businessman James Packer, in exchange for political favors.
In the second, the prime minister is prosecuted for trying to negotiate more favorable coverage from Arnon Mozes, publisher of the daily Yedioth Aharonoththe first paid national daily, in exchange for the promise of a law which would have hindered the circulation of the free newspaper Israel Hayoma popular title in Israel.
In the latest case, Mr. Netanyahu is accused of trying to facilitate a merger desired by a close friend, Shaul Elovitch, then majority shareholder of Bezeq, the country’s largest telecommunications group, in exchange for favorable coverage of its politics on the popular news website Walla, also owned by Mr. Elovitch.
Mr. Netanyahu’s detractors see the holding of the trial as an opportunity for justice to finally be done against a politician ready to do anything to stay in power. They also claim that the prime minister used the war that has been going on for 14 months as a pretext to escape a trial that is likely to find him guilty.
“Important milestone”
The resumption of the trial constitutes “an important step”, Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) think tank, told AFP, for whom “the fact that a very powerful prime minister is indicted and that his legal file be examined by the court [témoigne] of the strength of Israel’s democratic institutions. »
A sign of some concern in Mr. Netanyahu’s camp, a dozen ministers sent a letter on Monday to Gali Baharav-Miara, state attorney general, to request a postponement of the hearing, notably due to the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in neighboring Syria.
The letter follows similar calls from ministers and requests from the prime minister’s legal team to postpone his hearing due to the war and his busy schedule.
The prosecution, however, argued that it was in the public interest for the trial to conclude as quickly as possible, and the court denied these requests, although occasionally allowing hearings to be shortened.
