ISRAEL
Israel Hayom
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.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.