When Justice Minister Yariv Levin changed the locks to the office that Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara uses for her job, he defied legal protocol and court orders, the A-G said in a response late Sunday night to the High Court of Justice.
The justice minister issued his own response on the matter just a few hours earlier.
The petitions to the court came from groups that asserted that what Levin did, which he only confirmed after reports alleged that he was behind the instruction, went against court orders that froze the government’s decision from earlier this month to fire the attorney-general.
Part of the directives ordered by Deputy Supreme Court Chief Justice Noam Sohlberg at the time was that no aspect of her job should be changed until the court could conduct a lengthy judicial review of the decision itself, nor should any of her authorities be curtailed.
The office Baharav-Miara uses is in the Justice Ministry’s offices in Tel Aviv. In his Sunday response, Levin explained that not only does the office not belong to her, but it belongs to him as the justice minister.
A-G office, a "decades long costume"
Baharav-Miara explained that “the decades-long custom in the Justice Ministry is that the staff of the Attorney-General’s Office sits at the Tel Aviv offices.” She added that her arrival is always coordinated beforehand with the justice minister’s office.
“Only after the government decision [to fire Baharav-Miara] was a one-sided decision reached to block the A-G’s access from the office – and all with no explanation,” she wrote.
She added that this defies the High Court order not to change any aspect of her job. “It appears that the goal of this act was to harm the attorney-general’s standing and professionalism.”