A matter of time
In 2008, under the cover of darkness, Malka Leifer fled Australia after allegations of sexual abuse were brought to the attention of the Adass 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.