Jerusalem:
The Israeli police are carrying out a criminal investigation into Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the state prosecutor’s office in a letter made public on Sunday.
“A criminal investigation was opened” in alleged criminal crimes, the office said in a letter to an Israeli opposition legislator who had accused Sara Netanyahu to manipulate her husband’s corruption trial after the transmission in December of an investigation of an investigation of television news.
Naama Lazimi, a member of the Democrats KNESET, shared the letter in X on Sunday confirming that criminal investigation was launched on December 26, and added that his office had contacted the state prosecutor after the investigation of the news program UVDA of the Israeli Channel 12.
The program claimed that Sara Netanyahu had tried to intimidate a key witness in the corruption trial of her husband.
She also organized demonstrations to harass the attorney general, her deputy and other people considered hostile to her husband, according to the program.
The State Prosecutor’s Office added that the investigation was “carried out by the Israel Police accompanied by the Cybernetic Department of the State Prosecutor’s Office.”
In December, Benjamin Netanyahu testified in the corruption trial in which he faces charges of bribery, fraud and breach of public confidence in three separate cases, qualifying the charges against him “ridiculous.”
The trial, which had been delayed many times since it began in May 2020, is scheduled to last months, with a process of appeals that could further prolong the issues.
Netanyahu, who submitted multiple requests to delay procedures based on wars in Gaza and Lebanon, has firmly denied any irregularity.
In the first case, Netanyahu and his wife are accused of accepting more than $ 260,000 in luxury products such as cigarettes, jewelry and multimillionaire champagne in exchange for political favors.
He is the first prime minister to face the criminal trial in the country.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a union feed).
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