In 2008, under the cover of darkness, Malka Leifer fled Australia after allegations of sexual abuse were brought to the attention of the Adas Israel School in Melbourne whose board members then helped her flee the country.
On Tuesday, 12 years after that fateful night, the cogs of Israeli justice finally began to grind into motion as the Jerusalem District Court ruled that Leifer’s protestations of psychiatric illness over the last six years were false and that she is fit to be extradited back to Australia.
The ruling handed down by the court in the 67th court date of the case is by no means the final chapter of this legal saga, with the extraditions proceedings themselves and several appeal stages still ahead.
Yet Judge Chana Miriam Lomp’s decision does have an air of finality about it in terms of the final outcome.
Lomp wrote very clearly that she was basing her decision on the expert opinion of state psychiatrists who had examined Leifer in person on three occasions and clearly established that she met the bar for psychiatric competence for extradition and to stand trial.
She also specifically noted that her decision to appoint a new psychiatric panel had not been because the previous professional opinions had been invalid but because there were sufficient deficiencies in them to warrant a final, clear evaluation.
In other words, Lomp was pointing out for the Supreme Court that despite a determination by a psychiatric panel in 2015 that Leifer was mentally unfit for extradition there should be no real need to ignore the final determination of the final panel.
Notably, when challenged on the ruling in court on Tuesday by Leifer’s defense attorney’s, Lomp said that she had “left no stone unturned” in reference to her accommodating attitude to the numerous demands of Leifer’s defense team for extra witnesses and cross-examination.
Although the decision will still be challenged, it may serve to defuse some of the tensions that have arisen due to the lengthy legal battle.
Australian authorities first requested Leifer’s extradition in March 2012, and during the intervening eight years the patience of several Australian governments has worn thin, as has that of the Australian Jewish community which has been severely embarrassed by the unseemly saga.
Australian government officials, including Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the attorney-general, and the Australian parliament in a motion, have all called for Leifer’s extradition, and others protested that former health minister Ya’acov Litzman, who has been charged by the police with interfering on behalf of Leifer in the case, remained in his position for so long.
And diplomatic officials and Jewish leaders became concerned that the trust of Australian politicians and the Australian general public in Israel as a state which upholds the rule of law has been eroded somewhat by the Leifer case.
Now that there is at last a clear, if not final, decision on Leifer’s fitness for extradition those tensions may begin to ease.
Critically, the decision on Tuesday is a point of light in the generally dark and depressing reality in which Israel has become a magnet for Jewish sex offenders from abroad who flee legal troubles in their home country, before or after conviction, and arrive with a blank slate and freedom of movement.
There have been numerous such cases in recent years, including instances where sex offenders who committed their crimes abroad then abused children in Israel as well.
The Jerusalem District Court’s ruling on Tuesday in this very public case may help deter such people from attempting what Leifer did, on the understanding that eventually, the law will catch up with them.