Court says suspicions against Braverman ‘strengthened substantially,’ extends restrictions

The Lod-Central District Court extends the restrictive release conditions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff Tzahi Braverman and says that the evidence gathered during the police investigation has “substantially strengthened” the suspicions against him.

The decision overturns a ruling last week by the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court, which did not extend the restrictive conditions as requested by the police.

The Lod-Central District Court extends the restrictions until February 24, which include being barred from the Prime Minister’s Office and IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv; a ban on contacting the prime minister, Netanyahu’s media adviser Eli Feldstein, and several other employees in the PMO; and a ban on leaving the country.

Braverman is scheduled to take up the post of ambassador to the United Kingdom, but restrictions on leaving the country have delayed this appointment.

The district court notes that the restriction was harming Braverman’s rights to a greater extent than is usual, but says that the strengthening suspicions against him rule out removing it.

Braverman is being investigated on suspicion of interfering with an investigation, the transmission of official information by a public servant, and fraud and breach of trust, in connection to allegations that Braverman told Feldstein that he could quash a military investigation into the latter’s leak of a classified document to the German Bild newspaper.

Judge Michael Karshan of the Lod-Central District Court is also strongly critical of Rishon Lezion Magistrate Court President Menahem Mizrahi, saying his ruling last week against extending the restrictions contained numerous flaws and criticizing disclosures of the details of the case Mizrahi made in his decision.

“There is no foundation to the rationale of the lower court that the reasonable suspicion against the respondent [Braverman] has weakened. The opposite is true,” writes Karshan.

He also rejects Mizrahi’s assertion that the police have worked too slowly and without a proper investigative plan, and insists that classified information presented to the magistrate’s court showed that the police had formulated a proper plan.

Judges in the Lod-Central District Court have criticized Mizrahi on numerous occasions over his decisions and the handling of the Bild-leaked documents case and the Qatargate case, over which he has presided.