PREVIEW: Former Israeli President Katsav to be sentenced Tuesday

Mar 21, 2011, 14:19 GMT

Tel Aviv - Former Israeli President Moshe Katsav will be sentenced Tuesday after being convicted last year of rape and other sexual charges brought by former female employees.

However, is unclear whether he will receive a jail sentence, since the court could rule that though his crimes were grave, his 'public punishment' and loss of standing are sentence enough.

If he avoids prison the outcry will be huge. In Israel, rape carries a minimum sentence of four years, and a maximum one of 16.

Katsav, 65, was convicted on December 30 of all the sexual charges brought against him by former female employees, including two counts of rape and one count of a forced indecent act.

Thr trial last 18 months, and came four years after the allegations against him first surfaced - and 12 years after the first offence he was found guilty of.

Katsav becomes the first former president - or 'Citizen Number 1' as Israelis call the mainly ceremonial post - to be facing a possible political retirement spent behind bars.

But while Katsav is the highest-ranking politician to have stood trial, he is not the only top official to have come before the courts, or found his political career brought to an abrupt and embarrassing end because of scandal.

His predecessor in the presidency, Ezer Weizman, was forced to quit the post after a financial scandal.

Ironically, Katsav, who has now brought the Israeli presidency to its lowest-ever ebb, had been originally elected to the post in part to restore some of the dignity it had lost under Weizman - a flamboyant, maverick and undiplomatic former fighter pilot and defence minister.

Weizman was never indicted. Former Israeli Prmeier Ehud Olmert, however, who resigned the premiership in 2008 amid corruption allegations, is currently standing trial over accusations that he repeatedly claimed the same travel expenses for trips abroad to different government bodies and Jewish organizations.

And last week, the state prosecutor announced his intention to indict Olmert for bribery and other charges relating to a huge Jerusalem real-estate project, which the former premier allegedly advanced while mayor of Jerusalem and Minister of Trade and Industry.

A close political ally of the former premier, and a former finance minister, Avraham Hirschson, is serving a sentence of more than five years for embezzling about one million US dollars from a workers' federation he chaired.

Two other top officials of Olmert's centrist Kadima party have also faced the courts.

Tzahi Hanegbi, a front-bench legislator and head of the prestigious parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, was forced to resign from parliament after the court ruled in November that an earlier conviction for perjury constituted moral turpitude.

Hanegbi had stood trial for, and been acquitted of, breach of trust, election bribery and trying to influence a voter.

Veteran politician Haim Ramon, a former minister, quit politics before he was convicted in January 2007 of indecent assault for having kissed a female soldier at the Prime Minister's Office. He was sentenced to community service.

Another high-profile Kadima figure, Omri Sharon, the son of former Premier Ariel Sharon, served time in prison in 2008, for fraud related to his father's 1999 primary campaign to head the Likud Party.

Another prison sentence was handed down to Shlomo Benizri, of the religious Shas party, a former Labour and social welfare minister, who was given more than four years on jail for receiving bribes.

Benizri's party colleague, former Shas leader Ariyeh Deeri, who held various ministerial posts in successive Israeli governments, was released from jail in 2002 after serving 22 months for being found guilty of accepting bribes.

While some Israeli commentators have seen the slew of corruption affairs as being a stain on Israel; others however echo legal commentator Moshe Negbi, who pointed out that the test of a law-abiding country is not whether there is or is not corruption at the top, but whether there is anyone prepared to fight it.

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