Man tries to prove he cheated on his wife

Unfaithful spouses usually prefer to be discreet about their indiscretions. This includes deleting online chats with their lovers to keep from being found out.

But a man from the north of Israel who confessed to having had an extramarital affair with his wife’s best friend several years ago is trying to have the chats he says they exchanged brought back from the digital recycle bin to get out of even hotter water.

The man, a CEO in his 40s, confessed to his wife that he had an affair with her best friend about three years ago, Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Wednesday. Shortly after making his confession and ending the affair, the woman he identified as his former lover complained to police that he had threatened her.

When police summoned him for questioning, he told them about his former relationship with the woman — but the woman denied there had ever been an affair.

Through his attorney, Liron Malka, he asked the court to accept their chats over Facebook as proof of the affair, which he said would show the woman had lied to police and would bolster his contention that the woman’s accusations were motivated by anger at his severing of their relationship.

There was just one problem: He first had to get the chats back into his possession, since he had deleted them to keep his wife from finding out about the relationship.

Facebook keeps chats on its servers for some time after users delete them. But when the man asked Facebook for his deleted chats back, he was told that he needed a court order — even though he was party to the chats.

The man, together with his attorney, are now fighting Facebook to get the lost messages back so they can be presented as evidence in court.

“If the information is still on Facebook’s servers,” Malka said, “then there is no reason why it should not be restored to its legal owner.”