Tagrid Sa'adi was convicted for assisting terrorists who carried out 2003 J'lem attack which killed 6.
By DAN IZENBERGterror attack generic 248.88(photo credit: AP)
A woman who served six years in prison for concealing knowledge of a suicide attack that killed six people in Jerusalem withdrew on Sunday from the Hadash Party's slate of candidates for the Sakhnin municipal council, following a petition by the Movement for Quality Government.
The woman, Tagrid Sa'adi, lied when she filled out her forms by stating that she was fully eligible to run for municipal office, even though according to the law, anyone who has served more than three months in jail and whose crime involves moral turpitude is prohibited from running for office for seven years after the end of the sentence.
A person who wishes to run before the end of the seven years may ask the head of the elections to determine whether the crime committed involved moral turpitude. Sa'adi did not do so.
The details of Sa'adi's candidacy were published by Yediot Aharonot on November 2. The Movement for Quality Government (MQG) wrote to officials in Sakhnin, the Interior Ministry and the Attorney-General's Office that same day and pointed out that the candidacy violated the law.
The state replied that according to the law, it was too late to erase Sa'adi's name from the list of candidates, but that it would take action after the elections if she were elected to the council.
Sunday's hearing was delayed over a technical question, because the petitioner did not include the Hadash party as a respondent. But as soon as the matter was resolved, attorney Wahib Khatib, a lawyer for Adalah - the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which represented Sa'adi, informed the court that she had agreed to resign from the list.
In their response to the petition, Sa'adi and Adalah did not refer to the fact that she had lied to the election officials in Sakhnin. They argued that the petition had come too late and that according to the law, the list could not be changed so close to election day.
Sa'adi and her lawyers insisted that the court's decision include that she did not agree with the allegations against her in the petition. However, they did not explain what she meant by that, since she had in fact been convicted and served six years in jail.
The court charged her NIS 7,500 in court costs.
"It looks like the state wants to commit suicide," said attorney Eliad Shraga, chairman of the MQG, after the hearing. "It stands up and defends the terrorist's candidacy and says that only afterwards will it disqualify her. It's a scandal. Can you imagine that bin Laden or some other terrorist would run for office in Chicago and the US attorney-general would defend his right? A terrorist remains a terrorist. We have a very serious problem with a fifth column inside Israel which is trying to destroy us from within. That's why the state's position is so stupid."
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