New legislation aims to make it harder to indict senior officials, including PM, ministers, judges

A new version of the controversial legislation to increase government control over the role of the attorney general includes a clause that would require the attorney general to obtain permission from a district court before opening a criminal investigation into politicians or senior public servants.

The new version of the bill, introduced by Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee Chairman MK Simcha Rothman, would also require the attorney general to get approval from a special committee to file an indictment against such figures.

The officials listed in the bill are the prime minister, cabinet ministers and deputy ministers, members of Knesset, judges, and rabbinical judges, among others.

The special committee would be made up of a retired Supreme Court or district court judge to be chosen by the Supreme Court, as well as two private lawyers with expertise in criminal law, not from the state prosecutor’s office, one of whom would be chosen by the attorney general and one by the Knesset State Control Committee.

Committee legal adviser Gur Bligh says the clause is problematic since it will create a two-tiered justice system, one where regular citizens can be indicted simply by the prosecutor general, whereas politicians and senior public servants can only be indicted after the approval of three different bodies or decision-makers, which he says would have a chilling effect on filing indictments against such officials.

Professional representatives of the Justice Ministry, the State Attorney’s Office, and the police also oppose the new clause, saying respectively that it will harm the separation of powers, negatively impact the professional discretion of the attorney general, and will complicate the filing of indictments since the two private lawyers on the special committee would be exposed to sensitive information and could also refuse to even convene to file an indictment.

Rothman says he will begin voting on the legislation in committee tomorrow in order to pass it to the Knesset plenum for its first reading.