Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said Thursday in a Supreme Court filing that Justice Ministry Director-General Itamar Donenfeld inappropriately pushed through an appointment to the committee that will select the leadership of the Department of Internal Police Investigations, politicizing it.

The DIPI is a Justice Ministry department that investigates police.

Baharav-Miara called on the court to halt appointments to the committee and to the DIPI’s top jobs, citing concerns that an unduly politicized DIPI could “instill fear in officers, investigators, prosecutors and journalists” and “harm law enforcement’s ability to perform its duty to ensure the integrity of the coming election,” on October 27.

The Knesset in June passed an amendment that would move the DIPI from the State Attorney’s Office to the direct control of the justice minister, with proponents of the legislation citing prosecutors’ cooperation with police to argue that DIPI had an institutional bias against specific targets associated with the political right.

Baharav-Miara, who along with other senior legal officials have warned the legislation undermines DIPI’s independence and politicizes its work, filed the brief to the court as part of petitions against the measure. Critics have also argued that the law was part of the government’s broader drive to assert control over levers of legal power in the country, and reduce checks on government authority.

The amendment empowers a five-member committee to appoint the two top officers of the new DIPI, the majority of which would be controlled or influenced by the justice minister or the ministry’s director-general.

The committee........

© The Times of Israel