Jerusalem Court Rules Alleged Sex Offender Malka Leifer Will be Extradited to Australia

Jerusalem, 21 September, 2020 (TPS) -- The Jerusalem Court District on Monday ruled that alleged sex offender Malka Leifer can be extradited back to Australia where she will stand trial.

At hearing number 71 in Leifer’s case and after six years of proceedings in Israel, Judge Chana Lomp ordered that Leifer be extradited to Australia to face 74 charges including rape and sexual assault against three of her former students, the sisters Nicole, Dassi and Elly.

The ruling comes weeks after the High Court of Justice unanimously rejected an appeal filed by Leifer in the extradition proceedings pending in her case and ruled that Leifer’s mental condition did not preclude her extradition to Australia.

A psychiatric panel in January decided that the alleged sex offender, who escaped to Israel from Australia, is mentally fit to stand trial and has been feigning mental illness.

Leifer, a former Ultra-Orthodox girls’ school principal, is charged in Australia with dozens of cases of child abuse. She fled to Israel in 2008 following allegations that she had sexually abused students at the Adass Yisroel school in Melbourne on 74 different occasions.

“Today is a great day for justice. It is a day which at times seemed like it would never arrive, but we are thrilled that it is finally here,” said Manny Waks of the Kol v’Oz abuse victims organization.