‘Israeli’ Court Orders Prosecution to Give Netanyahu Lawyers More Files in Graft Cases

By Staff, Agencies

The occupied al-Quds District Court on Tuesday ordered the ‘Israeli’ entity to hand over some investigatory material to Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal team within seven days, as part of the criminal cases against him.

In doing so, the court partially accepted a claim by Netanyahu’s legal team, and the legal teams of the other defendants in the case, that the prosecution had “filtered out” some materials handed over in discovery.

The court also turned down some requests for more materials found to be irrelevant to the case.

Among the documents the judges ordered prosecutors to give to the defense were files from two of the investigations in which Netanyahu faces charges, known as Case 2000 and Case 4000, as well as from an internal police probe of an investigator who had a conflict of interest allegedly covered up by law enforcement.

“[The documents] include raw information of potential value and relevance for the defense,” the judges wrote in the ruling.

The ruling came two days after Netanyahu’s attorneys asked the court to throw out the criminal charges against the premier, claiming law enforcement “invented” the corruption charges.

The prosecution said it was familiar with the claims presented by Netanyahu’s team, adding that many of the accusations had been raised in the past. It said it would respond to the allegations in court.

The next hearing in Netanyahu’s trial that will deal with these claims is scheduled for December 6.

Last week, the Jerusalem District Court delayed the start of the evidentiary stage in Netanyahu’s trial until February. The court said witness testimony would be pushed off by a month, and that precise dates would be determined later.

The judges said Netanyahu will be required to attend a plea hearing on January 13.

The premier’s trial on charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes opened in May. Though Netanyahu attended the first hearing, he was granted an exemption from appearing at the largely procedural stages of the trial.

His lawyers have repeatedly moved to delay and discredit the proceedings, filing complaints against the prosecution, alleging “criminal tactics” against them, calling for changing the indictment against the prime minister, and arguing they have not received the full case files from the police and therefore cannot properly prepare a defense.