Israeli former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public corruption trial was delayed for a third time Monday after a court ordered an additional week’s delay.
The trial has been frozen since June 16 and will now reconvene on July 19 instead of the prior dates of July 5 or 12 for restarting witness testimony of July 5, reported The Jerusalem Post.
The decision of the so-called ‘Jerusalem District Court’ effectively means that the trial will not fully restart until October; the court’s summer recess runs from July 21 – September 1 and many of September’s hearings will be canceled due to the Jewish High Holy Days and Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles).
The root cause of the delay is a disagreement between the prosecution and the defense regarding the handling of documents pertaining to the contents of former Walla CEO Ilan Yeshua’s cell phone, Israeli media reported.
That evidence is crucial to Case 4000 – or the Bezeq-Walla Media Affair. The prosecution alleges that Netanyahu used his power and influence to favor Bezeq in telecommunications policy in exchange for sympathetic media coverage from the Walla news site — with both companies owned by co-defendant Shaul Elovitch, according to the Post.
There is also significant disagreement about whether the prosecution was required to investigate text messages between Yeshua and other politicians and third parties and with the court having pressed them to do so, whether they would be turned over to the defense, the report added.
Source: Israeli media
