District court rejects PM's PR appeal to let police hack phones

Lawyers to appeal to Supreme Court.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the swearing-in ceremony of the 22nd Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem October 3, 2019 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the swearing-in ceremony of the 22nd Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem October 3, 2019
(photo credit: REUTERS)
he Tel Aviv District Court rejected the appeal of Ofer Golan and Yonatan Orich, top spokespeople for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, against a lower court decision that would allow the police to hack their cell phones to probe for evidence.
Netanyahu lawyer Amit Hadad vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The decision on Tuesday follows the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court previously approving the police request to review the cell phones more fully, despite the court criticizing police conduct of initially reviewing some of the cell phones without advising the spokespeople that they could refuse the police request, and without a prior court order.
Effectively, both the district and magistrate’s courts have now said that the police had violated procedure, but that substantively, they still had a right to review the cell phone’s content due to the charges against Golan, Orich and others. The defendants allegedly tried to intimidate state’s witness Shlomo Filber from continuing to cooperate with police against the prime minister.
Allegedly, Netanyahu’s top public relations people sent staff members with a megaphone to drive past Filber’s house broadcasting intimidating messages designed to get him to recant his accusations that Netanyahu perpetrated bribery in Case 4000, the Bezeq-Walla Affair.
Hadad continues to argue that allowing the police to review the cell phones after the police violated his client’s rights would be highly problematic.
He said this would send a message to police that they can ignore suspects’ rights.