The Jerusalem District Court has rejected the request of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attorney, to postpone further hearings until after the upcoming festivals (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot), in light of the renewed investigations being conducted into telephone calls made to and from the cell phone of Ilan Yeshua, former head of Walla, and alterations in the order of witnesses to be called.
The State Prosecution had previously argued that in order to prepare new materials for transfer to the defense team, there was a need for a break of several weeks. Accordingly, the defense requested at the very least a similar period of time in order to study the new material and prepare cross-examination, but the Court denied the request.
The request was submitted on Wednesday morning in the course of the hearing during which the cross-examination of the central witness in Case 4,000 – the former director of Walla, Ilan Yeshua – concluded, following cross-examination by Netanyahu’s defense attorney, Boaz Ben Tzur. The Court immediately denied the request.
A spokesman for Netanyahu responded: “The amount of time it will take the Prosecution to prepare the materials that it refrained from transferring months ago, along with the demand of the defense to study the new materials and prepare them for cross-examination, brings the timetable up to the time when the court enters its recess in any case. Thus, media accounts claiming that ‘Netanyahu’s lawyers demand postponing the trial until after the recess’ are misleading and a distortion of the truth.”