Former Likud justice minister: Cancel the Netanyahu charges and probe investigators

Amir Ohana, the Likud MK and former justice minister, says the charges against Benjamin Netanyahu must be canceled in light of police use of “doomsday weaponry” and the “extortion of state’s witnesses” to testify against the former prime minister.

Interviewed on Channel 12’s “Meet the Press” during a debate on police abuse of spyware tools to drain data from the phone of Shlomo Filber, the former Communications Ministry director-general who is a key state’s witness in the trial, Ohana says “canceling the charges is the very least that needs to be done” and calls for Netanyahu’s investigators to be investigated.

“Every day it is proved that this [investigation and indictment of Netanyahu] was a witchhunt,” Ohana says.

Micah Fetman, a former attorney for Netanyahu, says the likelihood of the charges being dropped is “not very large.”

Fetman says the prosecution and only the prosecution can decide whether Filber will testify as scheduled, but that it will fall to the judges to determine how much weight to give to his testimony.

Filber is due to begin testifying in Case 4000 in about two weeks’ time.

The Jerusalem District Court has ordered the prosecution to provide answers by Tuesday to a stream of allegations of abuse of spyware to drain data from Filber’s phone and possibly from others connected to the trial, and to update the court and the defense about what data was retrieved and what, if any, use was made of it.