Netanyahu requests to push off trial, citing spat over delivery of case files

With just nine days to go until the start of his corruption trial, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal team on Sunday asked that the opening court session be postponed as it has not yet received all of the case material.

Although the state prosecution has prepared the documents for delivery, Netanyahu’s attorneys are demanding that the paperwork be scanned instead, Haaretz reported.

Defense attorneys requested that the Jerusalem District Court agree to a 45-day continuance for the hearing, which is scheduled for March 17.

Netanyahu’s attorney Amit Hadad, said in statement, “A few months ago an indictment was filed against the prime minister, yet until now we have not received the material. Therefore, we applied to the court with a technical request to delay the date of the hearing, so that we can first receive the investigation material — and only afterwards appear in court.”

Ahead of a pre-indictment hearing for Netanyahu in October, only the key elements of the case material were provided to the defense team, with the full package of documents being prepared for them ahead of the trial. Haaretz reported that the delay in delivering the material hinges on a dispute between Netanyahu’s attorneys and prosecutors on how the documents should be handed over. Although the state prosecution has prepared the files, Netanyahu’s attorneys are demanding the documents be scanned and digitized, the report said.

The hearing next week was for the purpose of reading out the charges, with Netanyahu required to be present at the courthouse.

Netanyahu, in November, became Israel’s first sitting prime minister with charges against him, when Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced he would indict him for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Netanyahu denies the charges and claims he is the victim of an attempted “political coup” involving the opposition, media, police and state prosecutors.

The charges were filed following the pre-indictment hearings in October. Those hearings were postponed from the initial scheduled date of July 10 — three months after the investigation material was made available to Netanyahu’s lawyers, who took more than a month to collect it.

They had asked the attorney general for a full-year delay, arguing that the scope of the documents was too large to review in three months.

Mandelblit refused that request, saying it was not in the public interest.

Mandelblit already in February 2019 announced his intention to indict Netanyahu, pending a hearing, in the three cases against him. The prime minister’s attorneys requested, and were granted, that the case files not be handed over prior to the April 9 national election in order to prevent information from leaking to the media and affecting the vote.

But after the election, the lawyers refrained for another month from collecting the material, citing a dispute over their fees. They were accused at the time of engaging in delay tactics.

The April election failed to produce a majority government, as did a followup vote in September. A third round of voting earlier this month has still not broken the political deadlock.

The prime minister faces fraud and breach of trust charges in two cases, and bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges in a third.