AG asks judge to reject Ben Gvir’s bid to delay promoting police officer who testified against PM

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara urges a judge to throw out National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s request to further delay the promotion of a police investigator who drew his ire for testifying in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial.

The far-right minister has been refusing to sign off on the advancement of Supt. Rinat Saban since last summer, despite the fact that police chief Danny Levy backs her promotion.

The officer, part of the police’s investigations and intelligence division, helped investigate Netanyahu and his circle on corruption suspicions and took the stand against the premier in court last year.

Jerusalem District Court judge David Gidoni ordered Ben Gvir to promote Saban earlier this month, saying there was cause for “real concern about the existence of extraneous considerations” in his ongoing refusal.

But the minister is still holding off on the move, and requested a stay as he appeals the decision to the Supreme Court.

Another delay in implementing Saban’s promotion, Baharav-Miara warns in a letter to Gidoni, will cause “actual, additional harm to the officer [Saban] and the Israel Police.”

The attorney general notes that Gidoni himself warned in his ruling that “any additional delay may intensify the concern of harm to police independence.”

Ben Gvir did not initially admit that his reason for blocking Saban’s promotion was political, but came clean about his underlying motivation a week ago in a statement decrying Netanyahu’s trial as “illegal.”

“In a proper country, an investigator who partakes in an illegal investigation should end her police service rather than receive protection from Isaac Amit and his envoys,” he said, referring to the Supreme Court’s president.