AG says police chief must freeze ‘illegal’ dismissal of body’s legal adviser

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara instructs Police Commissioner Daniel Levy to freeze the process he has initiated to dismiss the Israel Police’s legal adviser, telling him his actions were illegal and that he was legally bound to abide by her instructions.

“The severity of this incident in which the Israel Police — which is responsible for obedience to the law — ignores legal instructions through a claim of independence, cannot be understated,” the attorney general declares in a letter to Levy.

The police commissioner announced last week he was dismissing Assistant Commissioner Elazar Kahana, the force’s top legal adviser, from his post, a move that Baharav-Miara then said she was blocking, but which Levy said he would ignore since, he claimed, she did not have the authority to intervene.

In her letter, the attorney general insists that Levy’s claims regarding police independence do not mean that the police, including the commissioner, are “independent of the rule of law or [of] the Israel Police being subject to the law.”

And she says that instructions from the attorney general over a concern that actions of a government agency were illegal are “a foundational principal” of proper administration in Israel, citing Supreme Court rulings to buttress her argument. Baharav-Miara also points out that the police legal adviser comes under the authority of the Attorney General’s Office, and that removing him from this position therefore requires consultation with the attorney general.

“All processes to remove the legal adviser to the police from his position and filling the position anew must therefore be frozen” until the examination of the matter can be completed, Baharav-Miara instructs Levy. Any other action would be illegal, she adds.

In response, Levy says that he made his thoughts on the situation clear last week, “and has nothing to add on the issue.”