TIL Desk/World/Jerusalem/ Israel’s parliament today approved at a first reading a bill that opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu say is designed to help him survive an ongoing police investigation.
If passed into law by a second and third reading it would alter current practice under which at the end of an enquiry police tell the attorney general if they feel that they have enough evidence for a prosecution.
Netanyahu has so far been questioned six times by detectives of the police national fraud and serious crimes squad over two suspected cases of corruption. The bill is being fast-tracked by the government and was rushed through a parliamentary preparatory committee hours before the house voted for it by 46 votes to 37.
“Two revisions were inserted into the legislation,” the website of the Knesset, or parliament, said in English. It said the first would allow the attorney general to ask the police for “input in the existing corruption probes into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.” But the police opinion could not be made public, it wrote.
