Israeli justice will decide in September on the extradition of Malka Leifer, suspected of having committed sexual abuse of minors in Australia, a court spokeswoman told AFP on Monday, July 20. The Jerusalem court held a hearing on Monday, the day after Ms Leifer's lawyers rejected an appeal against her extradition.
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Israeli justice concluded in May that Ms. Leifer, accused of dozens of assaults on underage girls at an Orthodox Jewish school she ran in Melbourne, Australia, was mentally fit to stand trial, thus opening the case. way to his extradition.
The Australian press says she is suspected of 74 assaults against minors but her lawyers said there were only three complaints left against her. She fled Australia twelve years ago after a former student filed a complaint against her. According to Israeli media reports, Malka Leifer lived in the Jewish settlement of Immanuel, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Arrest for "obstruction of justice"
The suspect is not present Monday at the hearing told AFP a spokesman for the court but attended by video conference. She had denied her guilt during various hearings devoted to her extradition in Israeli courts, the first having taken place in 2014. In 2016, she was declared unfit to be tried and hospitalized. But police officers dressed in civilian clothes had tracked her down and filmed her shopping and depositing a check in the bank to prove that she was faking her insanity, in order to avoid a trial.
These new revelations led to his arrest two years later for " obstructing justice " and encouraged new legal proceedings to establish his capacity to stand trial. On Sunday, the Israeli Supreme Court dismissed the appeal of the suspect's lawyers, saying the current legal process was valid, sending back to the Jerusalem District Court the decision to extradite her or not.