Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit sends an urgent appeal to Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein seeking to strip Joint (Arab) List MK Basel Ghattas of his parliamentary immunity after the lawmaker came under suspicion of passing contraband to Palestinian inmates in Israeli prison.
In light of the request, the House Committee is to vote later today on Ghattas’s immunity in a bid to advance the criminal proceedings against him. If the committee decides in favor of removing his immunity the matter will move to the Knesset itself, where Ghattas’s fellow lawmakers will have the final say.
Parliament doesn’t usually convene on Thursday so a special plenum session would be called, during which Ghattas would be given an opportunity to plead his case.
The development comes the day after Ghattas was questioned by the national serious crimes unit of the Israel Police over allegations he handed miniature cellphones and secret notes to two imprisoned Palestinians, one of whom is serving a 37-year sentence for murder, during a visit at Ketziot Prison south of Beersheba on Sunday.
Knesset members cannot be indicted so long as they enjoy parliamentary immunity.
— Stuart Winer and Marissa Newman
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