Former Shin Bet agent provocateur Avishai Raviv was acquitted
by Jerusalem Magistrate's Court of failing to notify
authorities of Yigal Amir's intention to assassinate prime
minister Yitzhak Rabin. The verdict comes more than seven
years after the events it refers to.
"After reviewing the evidence, we have reached a conclusion
that it has not been proven to us that the accused knew of
Yigal Amir's intention to murder the prime minister," the
special three-judge panel wrote in a unanimous ruling.
The dramatic verdict in the high-profile case, which opened
last April after two years of repeated delays, was a blow to
the State Attorney's Office and to Attorney-General Elyakim
Rubinstein, who made the decision to bring Raviv to trial
four years ago. Even then it was already more than three
years after the events themselves.
Raviv's primary state-appointed attorney, Eitan Peleg, said
that the unanimous acquittal proved that there was no reason
for Raviv to have been indicted in the first place.
Chief prosecutor Moshe Shilo said it is "too early" to say
whether the state will appeal. But senior Justice Ministry
officials said it would not.
In their 61-page ruling, a synopsis of which was read out by
Cohen, the judges wrote, "To convict Raviv of failing to
prevent a crime, in this case murder, suspicions are not
enough; rather, there is a need to prove real knowledge of an
intention to commit a crime."
The court accepted the position of the defense, which argued
that Raviv should be acquitted of all the charges against him
since the prosecution failed to prove that he believed Amir's
"general" statements about his intention to kill Rabin.
The judges noted that their decision to acquit Raviv was
partly based on testimony given by Amir himself. He testified
in December that he never directly informed Raviv of his
intention to kill Rabin, but said that he had publicly spoken
of the "need" to murder him several times. On the other hand,
Amir's convicted accomplices, his brother Hagai and Dror
Adani, claimed Raviv knew of the plot.
A former Kach activist recruited by the Shin Bet security
agency as a paid informer in 1987, Raviv was enlisted as a
double agent at the age of 20, continuing to work with the
service for the next eight years, until the week after
Rabin's assassination when the Shin Bet cut off all contact
with him. Between 1993 and 1995, Raviv became close to Yigal
Amir when both were students at Bar-Ilan University and
active in the anti-Oslo campaign.
The suspicion that Raviv might have known about Amir's
intentions first surfaced among Shin Bet officials on
November 6, 1995, 48 hours after the assassination, when
Raviv met with Amir in his cell to debrief him.
Immediately thereafter Raviv was questioned by two Shin Bet
officials, and their interrogation served as the main basis
for the prosecution's case.
Raviv told the court that when questioned by the two, "Yoni"
and "Moshe," he told a mixture of truth and lies, something
which the judges referred to as part of the "world of lies"
that Raviv, as a double agent, was living in. Indeed, they
noted that Raviv was a "troublesome" agent who "committed
some of the same crimes which he was employed by the Shin Bet
to prevent."
Despite the questions surrounding Raviv's character, they
wrote that they were acquitting him because there was "no
proof" he knew of Amir's intention to kill Rabin.
In their summation, the judges noted the following. First,
had Raviv known of Amir's intention, he would have done "all
he could" to stay away from Amir, and not debrief him in his
cell. Second, had Raviv been aware of Amir's intention, he
would likely have informed his operators in the Shin Bet
where he would have been viewed as a hero.
Third, the court said it is difficult to believe Amir would
have confided in Raviv, both because he was not a close
friend and because he was viewed as a loose-mouthed media-
hound and a possible Shin Bet mole.
The judges concluded that it remains unclear why, even if he
did not know of Amir's direct intention to assassinate Rabin,
Raviv did not report to his operators all the more general
things about Amir that he told the court. The answer to such
a critical question, they wrote, is beyond the scope of the
trial.
Observers noted that Margaret Har Shefi was convicted of
failing to prevent the assassination on the basis of having
heard the same kinds of statements that Raviv heard.
