PM’s office said to pressure Ronen Bar not to file formal statement to High Court

The Prime Minister’s Office has put pressure on Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar not to file a formal statement to the High Court of Justice detailing his claims against the government and the prime minister as to why he was fired, the Kan public broadcaster reports.

According to the unsourced report, messages were passed to Bar from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bureau saying if he would not file a formal statement to the court he could resign on a mutually agreed upon date and could even be involved in choosing his successor.

The Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to a request for comment and the Shin Bet declined to comment on the report.

Bar was fired by the cabinet on March 21 on the grounds that he had lost the trust of the government to do his job, but the High Court froze the decision while it considered petitions requesting it overturn the move due to conflict of interest and procedural concerns.

Bar sent a letter to the High Court at the beginning of April as part of the attorney general’s response to the petitions, alleging that Netanyahu repeatedly demanded he inform the judges in the premier’s criminal trial that the prime minister could not regularly testify in court due to security concerns.

The letter lacked legal standing and the court subsequently asked Bar to file a formal statement with precise details about his allegations, to which Netanyahu would be able to respond with his own statement.

Bar was supposed to have filed his statement today but asked the court for an extra day to do so. Kan reported that Bar’s delay was not connected to the alleged pressure exerted against him by the PMO not to file the declaration.