FOUR DAYS after Israel’s attorney general announced that former president Moshe Katsav would be brought to trial for alleged sexual offences, Mr Katsav launched a fierce attack on the attorney general, the police and the media, saying he was being framed by the system but would continue to fight for the truth.
Speaking at a news conference in his home town of Kiryat Malahi, Mr Katsav said the “campaign of incitement” had failed to break him.
“My blood has been shed daily by the attorney general, the state prosecutor’s office, the police, politicians and journalists. For 32 months my rights and my honour have been trampled, and the lynching will not stop,” Mr Katsav said.
The indictment against Mr Katsav will focus on the rape charge by a woman who worked with him when he was tourist minister, but there are also allegations of forcible indecent acts, obstruction of justice and sexual harassment.
Mr Katsav resigned two weeks before his seven-year term as president ended in 2007 under a plea bargain that would have required him to admit to lesser charges of sexual misconduct.
But at the last minute he called off the deal and said he would stand trial to clear his name.
Lawyers representing the former president promised a dramatic news conference with new revelations, but in a very long and rambling speech Mr Katsav merely repeated allegations of a witch hunt he has made in the past.
Most of his attacks were directed at attorney general Menahem Mazuz. “Mazuz has taken it upon himself to be both judge and executioner,” Mr Katsav said. “Unfortunately in the Israeli reality the rope he would hang me with is his own lifeline.”
He accused the attorney general of leaking to the media and issuing a gag order preventing publication of information casting doubt on the reliability of the women who testified against him.
The former president described the case against him as a mixture of McCarthy and Kafka, saying he has been humiliated but refused to surrender.
The news conference was an attempt by Mr Katsav to drum up public support ahead of the trial, for which a date has still to be set, and which some commentators are already dubbing Israel’s “trial of the century”.
The justice ministry reacted by accusing Mr Katsav of spreading false allegations and trying to turn his trial into “a public circus”.