{"id":10056,"date":"2010-12-30T12:33:01","date_gmt":"2010-12-30T09:33:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/?p=10056"},"modified":"2010-12-30T12:33:01","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T09:33:01","slug":"katsav-found-guilty-of-rape-30122010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/katsav-found-guilty-of-rape-30122010\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel ex-President Katsav found guilty of rape"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Former President of Israel Moshe Katsav has been found guilty of rape by a court in Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n

He had faced two allegations of rape by an employee when he was tourism minister in the 1990s. He was also convicted of later sexual offences.<\/p>\n

The judges said they believed the evidence of Woman A, whose testimony had led to both charges of rape.<\/p>\n

Moshe Katsav resigned from the post of ceremonial head of state in 2007 and was indicted in March 2009.<\/p>\n

He could now face a jail term of at least four years, although he is thought to be likely to contest the conviction in Israel’s supreme court.<\/p>\n

Before Katsav arrived for the verdict a crowd built up outside the district court, including many women’s rights activists.<\/p>\n

‘Riddled with lies’<\/strong>
\nThe former president, in office for seven years from 2000, had denied the charges, the most serious levelled against an Israeli head of state.<\/p>\n

He had rejected a plea bargain in 2008 that would have seen him plead guilty to sexual misconduct but avoid more serious charges.<\/p>\n

According to the indictment, the rape charges dated back to April 1998 when Woman A alleged he had first raped her at the Tourism Ministry office and later at a hotel in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

The further charges related to claims of sexual harassment of two women in 2003 and 2005 during his presidency.<\/p>\n

Reading the verdict, Judge George Karra who presided over a panel with two other judges, said: “We believe the plaintiff [Woman A] because her testimony is supported by elements of evidence, and she told the truth.”<\/p>\n

Katsav’s evidence, the judges decided, was “riddled with lies”.<\/p>\n

Moshe Katsav was born in Iran and immigrated to Israel with his family aged six in 1951. He joined the right-wing Likud party and held a number of ministerial posts before becoming president.<\/p>\n

The allegations against him first surfaced in 2006 and eventually led to him stepping down the following year, to be replaced by current President Shimon Peres.<\/p>\n

While his resignation caused shock across Israel, it had little political consequence as the post is largely ceremonial.<\/p>\n

Women’s groups in Israel have welcomed the verdict, arguing that allegations of sexual harassment are too often ignored.<\/p>\nError, group does not exist! Check your syntax! (ID: 8)<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israel ex-Prime Minister Katsav found guilty of rape. He could now face a jail term of at least four year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,1,37,101,14],"tags":[13831,11799,9287,4586],"class_list":["post-10056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-general","category-middle-east","category-politics","category-world","tag-israel-ex-prime-minister-moshe-katsav","tag-rape","tag-shimon-peres","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}