Azaria's Lawyers Resign After Submitting Appeal to the Court

Jerusalem, 1 March, 2017 (TPS) -- Three lawyers of Elor Azaria’s defense team, the IDF soldier sentenced in February 21 to a year-and-a-half in military prison for manslaughter of a neutralized terrorist last March, resigned on Wednesday from the case after submitting the team’s verdict appeal to the Military Court.

Only Defense Attorney Yoram Sheftel, who had joined the legal defense team following Azaria’s conviction, will be representing the IDF soldier from now on, while Azaria’s original attorneys decided to withdraw.

The reason behind the lawyers’ stepping down lies in a disagreement within the defense team on the judicious character of an appeal. Attorneys Eyal Beserglick, Carmit Schiver and Ilan Katz, who had been representing Azaria for the past year, believe in giving up on an appeal. Instead, they supported the demand for a pardon or a request to ease his punishment. Sheftel maintains, contrary to his colleagues, that the chief military prosecutor tried to pressure Azaria’s defense team into foregoing an appeal in exchange for the prosecution not appealing the “light” punishment.

In a press release, Beserglick, Schiver and Katz stated:  “We have worked day and night with endless motivation and strong friendship for Elor and his family, and we succeeded in achieving a fantastical punitive verdict, one almost impossible in a case of murder which turned manslaughter with video evidence”.

Members of the defense team explained  the reason, in their view, for Beserglick and Katz’s stepping down in these terms: “Although we still maintain that the verdict  is wrong and incoherent in light of the evidence, which is why we wrote a 50-page-long appeal filed and transmitted to Attorney Sheftel, we estimated we had reached the maximum from the court in this case,  and that at this stage, it was time for the soldier to turn to alternative channels”.  They also vowed to be ready to assist the family in any way possible in the future.

This turn of events follows on the heels of PM Netanyahu declaring on February 23, during his official trip to Australia, that he was supporting a pardon for Elor Azaria. By doing so, Netanyahu openly contradicted IDF COS Lt. General Gadi Eizenkot who called for “external interference” on the case to stop.

Azaria’s family supports the filing of the appeal. Following the declarations of Azaria’s former lawyers, Charlie Azaria, Elor’s father, thanked them and vowed to continue to fight to prove his son’s innocence. He argued that every citizen in Israel knows Elor was wrongly convicted.