These are conversations of Yeshua with key witnesses in the case – including state witness Nir Hefetz (the prime minister’s communications adviser at the time) and Iris Elowitz, the wife of Walla Walla husband Shaul Elowitz, who is also on trial. According to the prosecution, it turned out that the conversations were not deleted at all, but appear in the investigation material and references to them were sent this morning to the prime minister’s defense attorneys.
Advocate Boaz Ben-Tzur, the prime minister’s attorney, asked to receive Yeshua’s device, the recordings of which helped the prosecution formulate the indictment against Netanyahu and their credibility will be one of the main points of contention in the prime minister’s trial. Deleted and not in the hands of the defense, Netanyahu’s attorneys asked to try and recover these recordings in order to examine whether there were any materials hidden from the phone that might provide a broader connection to the talks and thus perhaps assist the prime minister.
On Tuesday, the State Attorney’s Office’s first response was submitted to the court, signed by Naomi Granot (Deputy Director of the Economic Department of the State Attorney’s Office), in which it was alleged that the attempts to extract the talks were futile. Granot referred in her announcement to a memorandum from the Securities Authority – the body that was entrusted with examining the instrument of salvation. Surprisingly, the contents of the memorandum contradicted the State Attorney’s Office’s announcement, stating that the reconstruction attempt was actually a partial success: , Forensics and analytics at the Securities Authority, which, as stated, conducted the test on the instrument.
Attached to the memorandum is also a table detailing the list of conversations between Yeshua and Hefetz, Iris Alovich and others, as stated in the number 8, between the months of July 2015 and November 2016. These conversations can shed new light on the recordings that appear in the file. In other words, the State Attorney’s Office’s announcement that no talks had been reinstated is in complete contradiction to the memorandum it attached, and which was supposed to support its position.
Yesterday there was a turn in the plot: the prosecution asked the court to ‘correct’ its response, with a new memorandum, which is in complete contradiction to the previous memorandum. This time it was determined that the reconstruction of the talks actually failed, in accordance with the State Attorney’s Office’s version on the subject. This memorandum was also signed by Lauren, the relevant expert from the Securities Authority.
According to the prosecution, the previous memorandum “was attached by mistake and its contents do not describe the state of affairs as revealed by the final computer tests.” The prosecution added that “although, along the way, it seemed that 8 deleted files could be recovered, but after further examination it became clear that these are files that have not been deleted and are in fact in the investigation material that was transferred to you.”
In response to the State Attorney’s Office’s response, Netanyahu’s attorneys asked for the relevant references in the investigation material for those conversations, but they claimed that the State Attorney’s Office refused to cooperate: “These attempts were futile,” the prime minister’s defense argued.
Instead, the prosecution returned a particularly convoluted answer: “The system mistakenly belonged to existing files that were never deleted to file names from another date and between other deleted speakers.” This morning, as stated, the State Attorney’s Office submitted a memorandum to Netanyahu’s attorneys, which it claims includes references to these talks.
In light of this, Netanyahu’s attorneys are asking the court to order the prosecution to hand over Yeshua’s cellphone, for examination by an expert on behalf of the prime minister’s defense attorneys, who will try to recreate the deleted conversations himself.