Court denies Netanyahu bid to block Canadian screening of leaked interrogation footage
Judge orders journalist Raviv Drucker, a producer of ‘The Bibi Files,’ to respond to PM’s complaint against him over film’s Monday night debut at Toronto festival
The Jerusalem District Court on Monday rejected a request by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to block the screening in Canada of “The Bibi Files,” which includes leaked footage of his interrogation by police between 2016 and 2018 on suspicions of corruption that have since yielded charges.
The film is set to debut at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday night. Netanyahu’s lawyers petitioned the court on Sunday for an injunction against journalist Raviv Drucker, one of the film’s producers, for publishing footage from a police interrogation without permission from the court — a crime that carries up to a year in prison.
“Drucker has for years made cynical, instrumental use” of Netanyahu’s corruption interrogation to hurt him politically, the complaint alleged, describing the journalist as a self-declared “political opponent” of Netanyahu.
“The fact that the publication is set to take place abroad makes no difference in this matter,” the complaint added, though it was unclear how an Israeli court could block an overseas screening. Appended to the request was a September 3 article in the Ynet news site about the film.
Judge Oded Shaham denied the request, citing the time that had passed since the report, but ordered Drucker to respond by Wednesday.
“The Bibi Files” features never-before-seen footage from the investigation of Netanyahu, as well as his wife Sara, son Yair, friends, associates and household staff. According to Variety magazine, the recordings were leaked to American director Alex Gibney last year.
Alex Gibney Doc Featuring Never-Before-Seen Police Interrogation Footage of Benjamin Netanyahu to Screen at TIFF (EXCLUSIVE) https://t.co/GVqbb1j0vY
— Variety (@Variety) September 2, 2024
“These recordings shed light on Netanyahu’s character in a way that is unprecedented and extraordinary,” Gibney was quoted as saying by Variety. “They are powerful evidence of his venal and corrupt character and how that led us to where we are at right now.”
The report added that the recordings, consisting of thousands of hours of interviews, have not been screened locally or abroad, due to Israel’s privacy laws.
Netanyahu was charged with fraud and breach of trust in three separate cases filed in 2019, and with bribery in one of them. The proceedings are ongoing and likely to take years to wrap up, especially given delays after the trial was suspended along with all other non-urgent cases after Hamas’s shock October 7 attack sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.
Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing in the cases against him and claims that the charges were fabricated in a witch hunt led by the police and state prosecution, and facilitated by a weak attorney general.
