AFTER a lengthy investigation in which President Katsav of Israel endured days of questioning over a sex scandal, the police recommended last night that he faces charges of raping and assaulting women.

The final decision on whether the President should stand trial on the charges of rape, sexual assault and fraud — the most serious ever laid against an Israeli leader — falls to Menachem Mazuz, the Attorney-General.

He is expected to reach a conclusion within two weeks on whether to indict President Katsav, who would almost certainly be forced to resign if the charges were laid against him.

Even though the President has relatively little power and his role is largely ceremonial, if he were forced from office the sensation would add further to the woes of Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister, already under pressure for his handling of the 34-day conflict with Hezbollah.

The 61-year-old Iranian-born President is not the first Israeli leader to come under suspicion. The previous president, Ezer Weizman, quit over allegations of improperly accepting gifts worth hundreds of thousand of pounds.

Several prime ministers have been suspected of financial misdeeds, and a former defence minister was convicted of sexual harassment. But the scope of the police evidence passed to Mr Mazuz yesterday — alleging sexual assault, illegal wire-tapping of staff at the President’s residence, fraud and improprieties in the pardons process — far outstrips accus- ations against past leaders.

In a joint statement capping months of investigations, Israel’s Justice Ministry and police said: “There is prima facie evidence of a number of incidents, in which several women who worked under his authority were involved, whereby the President carried out sex crimes of rape, sexual molestation by force and without consent.”

President Katsav, who vehemently denies any wrongdoing, was also suspected of “a violation of a law against eavesdropping”, it said, summing up findings presented by the police investigating team.

The President, who has been in office since 2000, is immune from prosecution unless he is impeached by the Israeli Parliament. However, there is a clamour among MPs for the married father of five to resign.

The inquiry began after a former employee alleged last April that the President had forced her to have sex under threat of dismissal. In all, ten women came forward making allegations of sexual harassment while the President was in office or in his previous role as a Likud party minister in the government.

Police who presented their findings yesterday based their case on the evidence of five of the women, including two who allege rape, ruling out the testimonies of the five others as they had passed the statute of limitations.

Investigators also recommended that there was insufficient evidence to press charges against the original complainant, who was accused of attem- pting to blackmail the President over sexual harassment.

Officers questioned President Katsav at his official residence in Jerusalem for days. Last night Zion Amir, the President’s lawyer, issued a statement pointing out that the police were not authorised to bring charges and noted that previously when police had recommended putting senior officials on trial, the Attorney-General had dismissed most cases.

A POLITICIAN'S LIFE

• Born in Yazd, Iran, in 1945
  
• Emigrated to Israel with family in 1951
  
• Enlisted in Israeli Defence Forces in 1964 and reached rank of corporal
  
• In 1968 became the first student from his village, Kiryat Malachi, to attend Hebrew University of Jerusalem, graduating in 1971 in economics and history
  
• In 1969 became youngest Israeli mayor; elected as coalition leader in Kiryat Malachi
  
• Elected to Knesset in 1981
  
• Served as a minister in departments of housing, transport, labour and tourism under Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir
  
• Deputy Prime Minister 1996-99
  
• Beat Shimon Peres to presidency in 2000, the first Israeli President to have been born in a Muslim country

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