Attorney demands prison explain why they’re prescribing Leifer anti-psychotic meds if panel says she’s faking

The family of Malka Leifer is demanding that the Israel Prisons Service respond to allegations of medical malpractice made by a court-ordered psychiatric panel, which deemed that the alleged serial pedophile was feigning mental illness.

In a letter to IPS, the Leifers’ attorney, Avraham Ambar, cites testimony given by one of the panel members, Dr. Amir Ben Efraim, who told the court during a cross examination hearing earlier this year that the IPS’s medical personnel had been wrong to prescribe Leifer anti-psychotic medications, which she has been taking for several years. Leifer’s attorneys have used the prison service diagnosis to assert that their client is indeed mentally ill.

“The patients in the [prison system] should be very worried,” Ben Efraim said then.

Ambar also cited the report compiled by the which stated that “the diagnoses of the IPS doctors are conducted in a negligent matter, without a thorough examination.”
The attorney demands a response from the IPS by Thursday, “in order to understand whether there indeed has been widespread negligence in the IPS as claimed by the panel chairman, or whether you stand behind the IPS doctors and behind the diagnoses and medical treatment that are still being given to Ms. Leifer,” Ambar writes.

The attorney tells The Times of Israel that if the IPS response is not satisfactory, he will pursue the matter in civil court.

Last month, the Jerusalem District Court determined that Leifer is mentally fit for extradition to Australia to stand trial on charges of 74 counts of child sex abuse.

An extradition hearing has been scheduled for July 20.

— Jacob Magid