The Jerusalem District Court announced on Sunday that all planned sessions this week in former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial will be postponed to Feb 21.
The former premier, now opposition leader, is on trial for fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases.
A high-level Israeli inquiry into alleged warrantless wiretaps by police is examining a database provided by NSO Group, the manufacturer of the powerful hacking tool Pegasus, the Justice Ministry said on Sunday.
NSO, which has denied wrongdoing amid months of spiraling reports in Israel and abroad of privacy violations by government clients using Pegasus, has said its “audit log’ database provides accurate information on phones infected by the spyware.
Israel’s Calcalist newspaper, in an unsourced report last week, said police had used Pegasus without judges' warrants against public figures including a son and two of Netanyahu’s close aides.
The report prompted the court to cancel a hearing in Netanyahu’s trial scheduled for Tuesday. It instructed prosecutors to answer questions from the former premier’s lawyers about the extent of the espionage.
The lawyers submitted their questions last week after multiple Israeli broadcasters reported that police may have used spyware on Shlomo Filber, a former Netanyahu ally turned state witness.
Prosecutors in the Netanyahu trial requested that Jerusalem District Court give them until Wednesday to deliver a fuller response, citing a need to declassify materials first, the Ministry statement added.
They said that the police have found no unlawful use of phone surveillance technology against witnesses in the trial.
Police and prosecutors insist that this is a side case and that Netanyahu will not be acquitted.
However, the court insists to carry on the inquiry to determine whether this claim is valid.
