The bill submitted by MK Moshe Saada, former Deputy Chief of the Police, according to which the police investigation department will be transferred to the authority of the Ministry of Justice, is expected to be discussed today (Sunday) in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation.
The proposal deals with changing the powers and subordination of the department today.
According to the proposal, in addition to police officers, the Ministry of Justice will be authorized to investigate prosecutors from the prosecutor's office, an authority that is currently only given to the Israel Police. In addition, Saada proposes that the Minister of Justice be able to appoint the director of the Ministry of Justice instead of the existing procedure of appointment based on a tender and competition of the Ministry of Justice .
It is also proposed in the new law, that the Police Department will become an independent unit, and the subordination to the State Attorney's Office will cease.
In an opinion submitted in the last day by the deputy ombudsman Amit Marari to the Minister of Justice Yariv Levin, Marari expressed the opposition of the legal counsel to the bill.
"Our position is that the bill must be opposed, which causes substantial difficulties, the main of which is a serious injury to the independence of the law enforcement system and the deterrence of members of the law enforcement system as far as fulfilling their duties is concerned, and as a result, a violation of the fundamental principles of the rule of law, equality before the law and protection against governmental corruption."
"Severe damage to the independence of the law enforcement system."
Deputy Ombudsman Marari (photo: official website, Legal Services Authority)
According to Attorney Marari, "the structural changes proposed in relation to the National Security Agency, including the cancellation of the organization of the National Security Agency to the State Attorney's Office and its subjugation to a political level, raise concerns about the politicization of an enforcement body, whose independence is extremely essential to its proper functioning and the fulfillment of basic principles of the rule of law.
The proposed organizational structure will eliminate a central guarantee for preserving the independence of the institutional discretion of the National Security Agency, both in the aspects of investigations and in the aspects of prosecution. And it will be clarified that the exercise of these powers, even when done legally, involves a built-in violation of the fundamental rights of the interrogated
and the accused, including the constitutional rights to dignity, privacy and freedom.
The judgment of whether and how to investigate the actions of a certain person and whether to file an indictment against him and how to conduct his trial, all of these must be guided by objective professional considerations only and without bias.
Therefore, it is not possible to accept a situation in which the extensive governmental power inherent in the criminal investigation and prosecution will be used, or may be suspected of being used, not for the proper purpose for which it was intended and not according to professional, impartial and objective standards, which ensure the proportionality of the harm to human rights resulting from the exercise of that power." .
"The proposed structure will eliminate a central guarantee for maintaining the independence of the discretion of the National Security Agency." The initiator of the proposal, MK Saada (Photo: Reuven Castro)
Attorney Merari also warns that "the discretionary independence of the general prosecution and the investigation system needs to be maintained in law and in practice;
Arrangements that may result in investigators and prosecutors biasing their judgment according to the will of the minister in charge of them, even without being given an explicit instruction to do so, due to the fear that they will be swallowed up, or arrangements that lead to even the appearance of biasing the judgment, are defective arrangements.
The damage of the aforementioned arrangements to the public's trust in the enforcement bodies is extremely severe.
Undermining the public's trust in the fairness of the law enforcement system and the application of the principle of equality before the law, will damage the public legitimacy for the exercise of the powers of the National Security Agency. Therefore, already in the design of the organizational structure of an enforcement body such as the National Security Agency, a separation between the prosecution and investigation systems and the political level must be ensured.
The difficulty that the bill raises in this context is twofold: one is the appointment of the director of the new unit that is actually sought to be established by the Minister of Justice;
and the second a certain subordination of this unit (whose essence was not clarified) to the Minister of Justice and the Director General of the Ministry of Justice,
Merari points out that the State Comptroller is working on preparing a report dealing with the conduct of the IDF and the findings are expected to be published soon. for their work.
Thus, for example, we can mention the amendment to the police order, which we referred to in an opinion submitted to the government about two weeks ago.
The backlog of these proposals raises concerns about a substantial violation of the independence of law enforcement bodies in the country, which is a fundamental principle in a democratic regime."
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