Word: zamir
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Harish was named to his post only three weeks ago, when his predecessor, Yitzhak Zamir, was abruptly removed from office after demanding a police investigation into the Shin Bet affair. The two Palestinians were captured by Israeli forces after hijacking a bus in 1984. They were photographed being led away from the bus but were later severely beaten and died under circumstances that have yet to be explained...
...Zamir, meanwhile, was accused of trying to push the probe along by leaking details of the case to reporters. Israeli newspapers quoted a "senior judicial source" as saying that the two Palestinians were killed in a "lynching" by five Shin Bet agents on the orders of Director Avraham Shalom. Two Likud members of parliament and a dozen lawyers have filed police complaints against Zamir identifying him as the source. The former Attorney General denied any impropriety. The press reported that the three former Shin Bet officials who sparked the affair by going to Zamir with the cover-up story have...
Attorney General Zamir became involved when three disaffected senior officials of Shin Bet came to him with evidence that the agency director, Avraham Shalom, whose name first became public last week when it was published abroad, had covered up Shin Bet's involvement in the death of two Palestinians who had commandeered a bus south of Tel Aviv in April 1984. The two terrorists were photographed being led away from the bus alive but later turned up dead, after being severely beaten. Two of their companions were killed in the assault on the bus, along with a female Israeli soldier...
...commissions of inquiry and one court-martial looked into the beating deaths. However, Israeli security personnel involved were cleared in part because of contradictory testimony from the military and Shin Bet on the question of when and where the two men died. The charges that Zamir might bring against Shalom are said to include tampering with evidence, suborning witnesses before the investigating commissions and withholding relevant documents. The worst allegation against Shalom: that he may have been responsible for covering up Shin Bet's involvement in the killing of the two terrorists...
Attorney General Zamir described the pressure for him to drop his investigation as "intense." Such a bipartisan effort to sidetrack a legal inquiry, which is not subject to Cabinet control, is most unusual; it reflects the government's extreme sensitivity to disclosures about the inner workings of Shin Bet. Nonetheless, support for Zamir and due process of law mounted steadily. Asked former Foreign Minister Abba Eban: "Should law bow before power? Should it abdicate?" Warned the Jerusalem Post: "The foundations of the rule of law in Israel may be in grave jeopardy...