Phone-smuggling Arab MK to face criminal indictment

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit on Thursday authorized the filing of an indictment against a member of Knesset charged with smuggling cellphones and coded messages to convicted Palestinian terrorists in an Israeli prison.

MK Basel Ghattas, of the Arab Joint List’s Balad faction, is facing a criminal investigation after he was caught on prison surveillance video passing envelopes to the prisoners last month. He was released to house arrest last week, five days after he was arrested.

In a letter to Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, Knesset House Committee chair MK Yoav Kisch and Ghattas himself, Mandelblit said he had given police the go-ahead to bring charges in accordance with the MK’s decision to waive his parliamentary immunity.

A formal indictment is now expected in the coming days.

A spokesperson from the attorney general’s office said a formal statement detailing the charges was set to be released later Thursday.

Ghattas’s arrest was made possible after the Knesset formally accepted his waiving of parliamentary immunity just hours before a December 22 session in the Knesset plenum was set to vote on removing it.

According to Mandelblit, who publicized the suspicions against Ghattas when he asked the Knesset to lift the immunity in late December, police had obtained surveillance footage of Ghattas passing envelopes to prisoners at Ketziot Prison, south of Beersheba.

One of the prisoners was Walid Daka, who received a 37-year sentence for the 1984 abduction and murder of 19-year-old IDF soldier Moshe Tamam. The MK also met with Basel Ben Sulieman Bezre, who is serving a 15-year sentence on a terror conviction.

Ghattas has admitted to handing over the envelopes, and said he knew that even giving prisoners benign items during visits contravened Prisons Service regulations, but insisted he thought he was giving them reading material, not cellphones.

But during his investigation, the lawmaker refused to tell investigators who gave him the smuggled phones. His lawyers claimed police already knew who had provided them. Last week, officers arrested Assad Daka, Walid’s 65-year-old brother, on suspicion of handing the MK the envelopes to pass to his brother.

On Monday, the Knesset Ethics Committee voted to distance Ghattas from the parliament for six months as a punitive measure over the allegations.

The decision, while banning him from committee and plenary debates, leaves his salary intact and does not affect his right to vote on bills, which is protected under the Basic Law: The Knesset.