Dec. 30: The former Israeli president Moshe Katsav was found guilty of rape and other sex crimes on Thursday which could see him jailed for years, in what the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, called a sad day for the Jewish state. “Katsav’s testimony was riddled with lies,” the three-judge panel said in its ruling. “When a woman says no, she means no.”
Katsav had denied the charges of twice raping an aide when he served as a Cabinet minister in the late 1990s, and of molesting, or sexually harassing two other women who worked for him during his 2000-2007 term as president. He was also convicted of obstructing justice, for trying to confer with one complainant about her testimony to the police.
“This is a sad day for the state of Israel and its residents,” Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party of which Katsav is a veteran member, said in a statement after the verdict. “Today the court conveyed two clear-cut messages, that all are equal before the law and that every woman has exclusive rights to her body,” Mr Netanyahu said.
The 65-year-old Katsav had no comment for reporters as, ashen-faced, he was spirited out of Tel Aviv district court by a scrum of relatives, attorneys and bodyguards.