As the zionist media report, the trial of former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will restart on July 12 instead of next Monday as planned.
The decision to extend the current delay, which is meant to allow defense attorneys time to review new evidence, came after the court partially accepted their argument that it would take longer to sift through some 350,000 messages and emails on the phone of former Walla CEO Ilan Yeshua after a recent order of a search through the device.
Judges previously rejected the defense’s request to halt proceedings until September, instead of granting an initial three-week delay, which has now been extended.
There will now only be seven hearings before the break for the High Holidays in September — five before the summer recess and two after it.
Prosecutors had hoped that the court would start to hear evidence from key witness Nir Hefetz, a former Netanyahu spokesman and confidant, before the summer recess; however, it is now unclear whether Yeshua’s testimony can be completed ahead of the break.
Yeshua is the first witness to give testimony in Netanyahu’s trial. He is a top witness in Case 4000, in which Netanyahu is alleged to have abused his powers, when he served as both premier and communications minister from 2014 to 2017, in order to illicitly and lucratively benefit the business interests of Bezeq telecom company’s controlling shareholder Elovitch.
Netanyahu’s attorney Boaz Ben Tzur has argued that Walla articles said by prosecutors to have been published due to pressure from Netanyahu aides were in fact initiated by the website’s staff while other news outlets were posting similar stories.
In his testimony, Yeshua has described how Netanyahu’s son Yair and his wife, Sara, and aides to the then-premier would systematically interfere in the running of Walla.
Netanyahu faces charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in the case, while Elovitch and his wife, Iris, have been charged with bribery. All three defendants deny wrongdoing.
HJ/PR