Police Warn Israeli Premier During Questioning

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, questioned this week in connection with possible wrongdoing in his government’s short-lived appointment of an attorney general, was officially warned by police that his statements legally could be used against him, Israel’s Channel One television reported Friday.

The caution to Netanyahu, which legal experts said suggests that police suspect he may have been involved in a crime, reportedly came during a long interrogation of the prime minister on Tuesday. Netanyahu and others named in the report have denied wrongdoing.

A police spokeswoman did not respond to telephone requests Friday night for confirmation of the report, aired after the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath at sundown.

Netanyahu advisor David Bar-Illan said he could not comment on specifics of the investigation or the TV report.

“But I am absolutely certain that no one in the prime minister’s office will be implicated in any kind of wrongdoing,” Bar-Illan said.

For four weeks, police have been investigating allegations that senior officials in the prime minister’s office conspired to appoint an attorney general who would reduce pending criminal charges against a key political ally.

Roni Bar-On, the lawyer and political activist who was appointed as attorney general, resigned less than a day after taking office in January.

A political furor has erupted over allegations that Netanyahu had agreed to appoint Bar-On as part of a complex deal to help Rabbi Aryeh Deri, a key member of the prime minister’s right-religious coalition who is embroiled in a lengthy corruption trial.

Those accounts, also initially carried by Channel One, stated that Deri, a leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, had threatened to withhold his party’s support for the critical Israeli-Palestinian agreement on Israel’s redeployment of its troops in the West Bank city of Hebron unless Bar-On was appointed as attorney general, Israel’s top law enforcement job.

Deri, the reports said, had received a promise from Bar-On that in exchange he would be offered a plea bargain, allowing him to continue his political career. Both men have denied any wrongdoing.

But Friday’s report of a police warning to Netanyahu during four hours of tense questioning in his office raised concerns here that the scandal could reach higher than previously supposed.

Moshe Negbi, a Hebrew University law professor and frequent commentator here on legal affairs, said it was the first time that he could remember that an Israeli prime minister was interrogated under warning.

“I suppose the offense they are thinking about in this case would be a breach of trust by a public official,” Negbi said.

“If he knew that the appointment of an attorney general was extorted by Mr. Deri to win favor in a criminal trial, and if he complied with that, then it is a breach of public trust on the part of the prime minister,” Negbi said.

Deri stepped down as Interior minister in 1993 after he was indicted on charges of illegally channeling government funds to his party and religious groups affiliated with it.

His trial has been underway for almost four years, but his legal woes appeared to be multiplying this week when his chief attorney, Dan Avi-Yitzhak, resigned and then spent hours with the police.