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Former
Israeli president facing rape charges jailed for seven years
Tuesday March 22, 2011 03:27:17 PM,
DPA
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Former
Israeli president awaits rape case sentence
Former Israeli President
Moshe Katsav will learn Tuesday whether he will go to jail on a rape
conviction in a case that has already made history in Israel. The
former head of state is the highest-ranking Israeli official ever to » |
Tel Aviv:
Former Israeli president Moshe Katsav was Tuesday sentenced to
seven years in jail with an additional two years suspended for
rape and sexual harassment by a court in Tel Aviv.
Katsav was convicted three months ago on two counts of rape
involving one former employee and indecent assault involving other
female subordinates while serving as a cabinet minister and later
as president.
The charges brought against him included two counts of rape,
sexual harassment, indecent assault, witness harassment and
obstruction of justice.
He was also ordered Tuesday to pay 100,000 shekels ($28,000) in
compensation to one of his victims.
"The accused is a symbol. The fact that he performed these acts
while holding a high rank only makes his acts more severe," court
president George Kara said.
"The defendant committed the crime and like every other person, he
must bear the consequences. No man is above the law," Kara said.
The court's decision was not unanimous, with one of the three
judges pressing for a a lesser jail term.
Katsav, who is expected to start serving his sentence in early
May, burst into tears when the sentencing was handing down and
cried out that the entire verdict was "a mistake".
"You have caused me grief. You have allowed the lies to triumph,"
he said. "The girls know that they lied."
The allegations against Katsav surfaced in July 2006 when a
journalist reported that the former president had complained to
the attorney general that he was being blackmailed by a former
employee who claimed he had sexually abused her.
The affair snowballed into one of complaints against Katsav
himself, stemming from his time as a government minister and as
president. Charges were brought four years later, after
accusations against him from 10 women.
Katsav insisted he was innocent and rejected a plea bargain which
would have seen him convicted on lessor charges, and at worst led
to a suspended sentence.
Katsav, at the time a front-bench legislator from the Likud Party,
was the unexpected victor when parliament chose Israel's eighth
president in July 2000, defeating elder-statesman Shimon Peres.
It was hoped at the time that he would restore to the presidency
much of the dignity it appeared to have lost under his
predecessor, the flamboyant, maverick and outspokenly undiplomatic
Ezer Weizman, who had been forced to curtail his term because of a
financial scandal.
Peres became president after Katsav resigned in 2007.
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