Gloves off for Metzger

By Mordechai Gilat
Israel Hayom
June 24, 2013

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=4751

Mordechai Gilat

In a normal country, Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger, who is embroiled in a criminal scandal, would have spent the past few days in a jail cell, all by himself with nothing but the famous odor of Lysol to keep him company. He would have been behind bars, like any other suspect. He would have been questioned under caution and exposed to some of the evidence against him in the interrogation room.

After all, he is the prime suspect in a serious fraud case and there is no reason to show him any courtesy. The needs of the investigation mandated that all he and the other three suspects -- who also enjoyed the same courtesy by default -- be remanded in police custody, with or without undercover agents in their cells to get them to incriminate themselves, to thwart any possibility that they would coordinate their testimonies or obstruct the investigation.

But this is not a normal country and here Metzger was remanded to house arrest, with the help of his longtime attorney David Libai, who has successfully seen him through previous scandals and who knows his client very well.

Libai, a former justice minister, is usually recruited to defend the creme de la creme of white-collar and corruption suspects; those who are in dire, or seemingly dire, legal straits, and those whose case seems to be a lost cause. They call on him to bail them out of jail and see them through a serious indictment or lengthy sentence. He is reputable and well-connected and his rates are very high.

Libai may have a different style, free of any capricious attacks on police investigators, but his client still has a problem: The police have evidence supporting the allegations that he received bribes on a regular basis, and evidence tying him to middlemen and brokers. The hole into which he has fallen is very deep.

The police were not surprised to learn that the chief rabbi was embroiled in another scandal. Metzger was a guest of their interrogation rooms back in 2005, when he was suspected of receiving illicit benefits from a Jerusalem hotel. The police recommended he be indicted, saying they had enough evidence to support filing criminal charges against him.

But then-Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz decided not to indict Metzger. He leveled harsh criticism against him, doubted his credibility and tried to have him removed from the Chief Rabbinical Council without pressing criminal charges against him, but failed. The High Court of Justice, in one of its darkest hours, protected the rabbi. The only righteous man in Sodom was then-Justice Edmond Levy, who ruled Metzger should face disciplinary action.