President elected to restore honour - guilty of rape (News Feature)

Dec 30, 2010, 15:50 GMT

By Jeff Abramowitz, dpa =

Tel Aviv (dpa) - For the first six years of his presidency, Moshe Katsav appeared to be doing exactly what had been expected of him when elected to the post in July 2000 - restoring to the presidency the dignity and sobriety it seemed to have lost under his predecessor, Ezer Weizman.

Weizman, flamboyant, maverick, undiplomatic - almost gleefully so - had eventually been forced to quit the post because of a financial scandal, and Katsav, a relatively colourless front-bencher and former minister from the Likud party, seemed a safe, if surprising, bet as his successor: a president who would not make waves but would not make headlines either.

Then, in July a journalist broke the news that 2006 Katsav had complained to the attorney-general that he was being blackmailed by a former employee who was alleging that he had sexually abused her.

The scandal then snowballed into one of complaints against Katsav himself, and over four years later, after accusations from 10 women, and counter-accusations by Katsav, the by-now former president was found guilty of rape and sexual harassment.

The verdict, by Judge George Kara, devastating in its detail, ended a trial which lasted 18 months and, since it had been held behind closed doors, provided the public with their first details of what Katsav had done.

The most serious complaint came from a woman, identified only as A who said she had been raped twice by Katsav when he was tourism minister.

Attending an event in Tel Aviv in April 2008, he lured her to his Tel Aviv office on a pretext, sat in a chair next to her and began touching her.

She ended up on the floor, trying to resist as he forced himself on her.

Three months later, he answered her knock on his hotel door wearing only a shirt, and, as she sat on the bed, looking away from him and waiting for him to finish dressing, forced himself on her for a second time.

Katsav denied the charges, but the judges found his testimony was 'riddled with lies,' for example pointing to the existence of a reservation fax, receipt and logs of telephone calls, in order to pick apart his claim that the hotel room had not been booked for him

He was also found guilty of sexual harassment and sexual assault in the cases of two other women, known as H and L, during his time as president.

But the court did not hear the other accusations, since the statute of limitations on them had passed.

Throughout the trial, Katsav maintained he was innocent. He rejected a plea bargain which would have seen him convicted on lesser charges, and at worst handed him a suspended sentence, since he wanted to prove his innocent in court.

It was a gamble which backfired spectacularly. By rejecting the plea-bargain, the judges said Thursday, Katsav had shuffled the deck, and not in his favour.

Katsav's other tactic throughout the affair was to complain of a media 'lynch' mob against him - most notably at a press conference in which he lambasted journalists, law enforcement officials, and even the attorney-general.

But the judges ruled that he too had 'been part of the publicity and the slander.'

The allegations against him eventually forced him to resign the presidency, shortly before his term ended in 2007. Thrust into the post in the hope he could rehabilitate it after Weizman, he left it instead even more badly tarnished.

The presidency, under Katsav's successor, elder-statesman Shimon Peres, has since regained its shine. But Katsav's reputation, after Thursday's verdict, lies in tatters.

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