State witness in Netanyahu trial sues prosecutors for millions over alleged sexual assault

Former Communication Ministry director Shlomo Filber says he was subjected to assault by Prison Service to force him to testify against the prime minister

Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter

Former Communications Ministry director-general Shlomo Filber arrives for a hearing at the Rishon Lezion Magistrate's Court on February 18, 2018. (Flash90)
Former Communications Ministry director-general Shlomo Filber arrives for a hearing at the Rishon Lezion Magistrate's Court on February 18, 2018. (Flash90)

Shlomo Filber, a state witness in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial, has filed a lawsuit demanding millions of shekels in compensation from former attorney general Avichai Mandelblit and former state attorney Shai Nitzan, as well as several state agencies, for sexual assault he says he suffered before agreeing to testify.

In the suit, filed on Sunday to the Lod-Central District Court, Filber demanded NIS 6 million ($1.7 million) in compensation for sexual assault he says he was subjected to during a body search conducted by the Israel Prison Service (IPS).

The lawsuit was filed against the IPS and the Israel Police’s 433 national crimes unit, as well as Mandelblit, Nitzan, former senior state prosecutor Liat Ben Ari, current prosecutor Yehudit Tirosh, and several other officials in the State Attorney’s Office and the IPS.

Filber, a former Communications Ministry director and a former chief of staff to Netanyahu, was a key witness in Case 4000 against the prime minister. He turned state witness and testified that the prime minister had instructed him to make decisions that financially benefited the Bezeq telecoms giant, incriminating himself in the process.

The prosecution alleges Netanyahu ordered Filber to make those decisions as part of an illicit quid pro quo agreement between the prime minister and Bezeq owner Shaul Elovitch.

Under cross-examination in court, however, Filber contradicted his original testimony, saying Netanyahu had not given him any instructions to benefit Bezeq, before reversing himself again and telling the court that his original testimony was accurate.

Then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) sitting with then-PMO chief of staff Shlomo Filber, on February 21, 2018 (Screenshot/Channel 12 news)

The State Attorney’s Office has requested to revoke the state witness agreement made with Filber, potentially exposing him to prosecution.

Filber has previously accused police interrogators of trying to manipulate him during their investigation.

“In the framework of the arrest and interrogation of the claimant, and especially in the stages before he signed the state witness agreement, the respondents put the claimant through seven circles of hell in a web of severe abuse whose pinnacle included a brutal act of sodomy committed by a prisoner guard in Hadarim Prison, a night before [Filber] signed a state witness agreement,” Filber’s lawsuit alleged.

Filber’s lawyer Liron Sharvit claimed in the suit that the sexual assault he suffered during the admission process to Hadarim was a planned tactic by all those listed as respondents to “trample the plaintiff’s dignity, humiliate him into the dirt, and break his spirit.”

Filber, the suit contended, signed the state witness agreement because of this abuse, “when he was in a completely unstable mental state, broken, humiliated, [and] after his humanity had been taken from him and his dignity degraded to the lowest possible point.”

The lawsuit included a medical opinion that Filber is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and mental disabilities as a result of the alleged abuse.

Filber initially told prosecutors that Netanyahu had encouraged him to slow the pace of gradual decreases in payments Bezeq’s competitors had to pay to use its telecommunications network, which was to Bezeq’s benefit.

He initially stood by those admissions in court, but in later cross-examination claimed he had taken Netanyahu’s comments to mean that he should act as he saw fit and to ensure that there was competition in the telecommunications market.

Shlomo Filber, former director general of the Communications Ministry, at a court hearing in the trial against Benjamin Netanyahu, at the District Court in Jerusalem on June 1, 2022. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Filber then reversed himself again in further testimony, and told the court that his original version of events, as given to the police and during his original court testimony, was accurate.

In 2014, Israel launched a wholesale market reform to open the fixed-line telephony and internet market to competition, owing to the domination by Bezeq of the market at the time.

Implementation of this reform stalled, however, while Filber was director-general of the Communications Ministry.

The prosecution alleges that Netanyahu had an illegal agreement with Elovitch through which the Walla news website, which Elovitch also owned, would provide favorable media coverage to the prime minister, who in return ensured the passage of regulatory decisions that would benefit Elovitch’s business interests.

During testimony in court, Netanyahu has strongly denied the existence of any such agreement between himself and Elovitch, and argued vehemently that Walla did not give him positive media coverage.

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