The Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that suspected sex offender Malka Leifer is fit for extradition, a decision which removes one of the final barriers to her extradition to Australia where she is wanted on 74 counts of sexual abuse and rape of minors.
“It has been unanimously decided to reject the appeal, since it has been established that there is nothing in the mental state of the appellant to prevent the continuation of the extradition process to Australia,” the three judge panel ruled in a decision issued on Wednesday.
Lefier has evaded extradition to Australia for six years by claiming to be mentally unfit for trial or extradition, and Wednesday’s ruling finally closes this central aspect of her legal fight with a definitive ruling which completely rejected this claim.
In the decision, Judge Yitzhak Amit wrote that there was no reason to intervene in the ruling handed down in May by the Jerusalem District Court that Lefier was fit for trial.
Amit said explicitly that Leifer’s claim that becomes psychotic precisly before court hearings on her case and when she undergoes psychiatric evaluation could not be accepted.
He continued to say that Leifer does not suffer from a mental illness in the legal sense and that she is fit to stand trial for the purposes of extradition, noting that no less than seven psychiatrists have at different times pronounced her fit for trial, six of whom said she is in fact feigning mental illness.
Amit also noted that after release from her various hospitalizations for psychiatric treatment, Leifer was seen acting as a normal person, visiting people in different cities, doing her groceries, conducting phone calls and similar.
The judge also wrote that the extradition process was merely a preliminary process before the main legal proceedings, and that the question of mental fitness for trial needed to be treated as such, and not as would be required for the regular criminal process.
The principal legal proceedings are those which will take place in Australia and there is no place to examine the issue of fitness for trial as if this were a local criminal case, said Amit.
He also said that the standard for fitness for trial was subsequently lower for extradition than for criminal proceedings.
In response to the ruling, Dassi Erlich, one of Leifer’s alleged victims said that she and her two sisters, also allegedly victims of Leifer’s abuse, were “exhilarated, and that there was now “an end in sight” after six years and 70 court hearings on the case.
“This abusive woman has been exploiting Israeli courts for 6 years! Intentionally creating obstacles, endless vexatious arguments - only lengthening our ongoing trauma! “ wrote Erlich on Twitter.
“Too many emotions to process!!! This is huge!”
Leifer fled from Australia to Israel in 2008 after allegations of sexual abuse surfaced against her, an extradition request was issued by Australian authorities to their Israeli counterparts in 2012, and she was arrested in 2014.
Due to her claims of mental illness, however, the court ended extradition proceedings in 2016, but Leifer was rearrested in February 2018 when evidence emerged from first a private and then a police investigation that she was leading a normal life in the Emanuel settlement where she lived, raising suspicions she was feigning mental illness to avoid extradition.
Following the Jerusalem District Court’s ruling in May that Leifer was fit for trial, extradition proceedings were restarted and an exhaustive hearing was held by the same court in July.
A decision on her extradition is due on September 21, although Leifer is able to appeal that decision back to the Supreme Court.
If the Supreme Court rejects that appeal, the justice minister can then approve the extradition order, but that decision too can be appealed to the High Court of Justice, which is the final chance for Leifer’s layers to prevent her extradition.