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Jerusalem, September 3 - Police investigators have announced their intention to formally recommend indicting every single Israeli citizen for various crimes including corruption and breach of trust, in order to simplify the inevitable.
Commissioner Yohanan Danino called a press conference this morning to advise the public of the impending move, and stressed that the public should be advised not to undertake any action that might further obstruct or compromise ongoing investigations. The list of defendants now stands at approximately 5.7 million, representing every Israeli citizen over the age of 14.
The police recommendation does not bind the prosecution, which makes it own determination, but the results of a police investigation generally indicate the direction the prosecution will take. In this case, Danino explained, the investigators came to the conclusion that mounting evidence increasingly points to the involvement of every single Israeli in one or more acts of theft, extortion, bribery or attempted bribery, embezzlement, breach of trust, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, or a host of other offenses that carry mandatory prison sentences and hefty fines.
Israelis under the age of 14 are involved to the same degree as their elders, said police spokesman Matan Shochad, but the limits of the criminal justice system capacity drove police officials to prioritize the cases against the senior cohort. "We expect that defendants under the age of 18 will be tried as minors, unless the evidence indicates a level of sophistication and maturity congruent with an adult sense of right and wrong," he said.
Included in the roster of potential defendants is the entire police force and prosecutorial apparatus, a matter that threatens to complicate tens of thousands of cases. Danino said he had already appointed a committee to review that problem, and the committee's preliminary deliberations have already produced some practical recommendations, including simply closing the investigations against all senior figures in the police and government.
"It's a matter of efficiency," he said curlty, briefly looking at three burly men in dark sunglasses at the back of the room. "And if the burden on the prosecution is still excessive, we can pare down the caseload by closing other investigations, such as, oh, I don't know, maybe high-profile attorneys accused of trying to bribe law enforcement officials to overlook rampant corruption at the port of Ashdod."