The Supreme Court today sentenced the former Minister of Labor, Social. Welfare and Absorption, Aharan Abu-Hat-zeira, to three months in prison. This was a more severe sentence than the Tel Aviv district court handed down in April, 1982. The court convicted him on charges of fraud, theft and breach of public trust but suspended a four-and-a-half month jail term. The Supreme Court held that the lower court had been too lenient.
The charges against Abu-Hatzeira stemmed from his administration of a State-supported charitable fund established in the name of his late father, former Chief Rabbi of Morocco Yitzhak Abu-Hatzeira, when he was the Mayor of Ramle in 1976. The Supreme Court justices denounced Abu-Hatzeira’s practice of transferring funds, while he was Welfare Minister, to public institutions.
After his conviction by the Tel Aviv district court, Abu-Hatzeira said he would not resign from his Knesset seat, as the head of the Tami faction which he formed in 1981 after defecting from the National Religious Party, pending the outcome of his appeal to the Supreme Court against his conviction.
By law, the Knesset cannot force him to give up his seat but the Knesset House Committee could suspend him for the period during which he serves his sentence. At the request of his defense attomey Shlomo Tussiah-Cohen, implementation of the prison term will not begin until October 2. The Tami secretariat and executive are scheduled to meet tomorrow to discuss the verdict.
After the Supreme Court handed down the jail sentence, police closed off the area around the court building. Members of Abu-Hatzeira’s family expressed their displeasure at the verdict and denounced the media.Tussiah-Cohen expressed surprise at the ruling. The former minister said he was not “shaken” by the decision. Tami leaders held a meeting here and made two decisions: one, to rally behind Abu-Hatzeira as the party chairman, pledging to have him lead the movement for the municipal elections three months away; and two, that Tami would demand an independent inquiry into the conduct of the police throughout the entire investigation of Abu-Hatzeira’s activities in office which led to the indictments. Abu-Hatzeira charged at the time he was treated unfairly by the police.
Benzion Rubin, Deputy Minister of Labor and Welfare, warned Menachem Begin’s coalition government that unless it started such an investigation within two weeks, Tami could withdraw from the coalition, narrowing its Knesset majority to a hair-thin 61 majority. Rubin told Israel Radio: “Ours are not empty threats.”
Although Abu-Hatzeira is not obligated by the sentence to resign from the Knesset, some Knesset members urged him to resign voluntarily. Shinui Knesset member Mordechai Virshubsky said “it is inconceivable that a Knesset member should go to jail on corruption charges and then resume his seat as though nothing had happened.”
An Alignment Knesset member, Yossi Sarid, took the same position, but the Labor Party, as a party, has not yet taken an official stand on whether Abu-Hatzeira should resign. Labor party sources admitted it would be unwise to antagonize Tami which, under existing circumstances, might shorten the term of the Likud government.
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