National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir informed Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara on Tuesday that he has accepted the Jerusalem District Court’s recommendation to promote senior police officer Ruti Hauslich to head of the Investigations Department.
He has also requested that Baharav-Miara express her position regarding “someone who impersonates and uses a title that was not given to them in the Knesset,” referencing Hauslich’s use of the title “Acting Head of the Investigations Department” in her petition.
The ministry added that while the promotion was granted at the court’s recommendation, it demands an answer from the A-G.
Hauslich, a senior officer in the police Investigations and Intelligence Division, was recommended by the police command for promotion to head of the Investigations Department, but Ben-Gvir refused to approve the move, citing what he called grave misconduct in her conduct before Knesset committees.
The attorney-general’s office has previously argued that his refusal appeared to rest on extraneous considerations and warned that such conduct risked turning promotions into a tool of political pressure inside the police.
At Thursday’s hearing, Hauslich’s lawyer explicitly tied the matter to the earlier Rinat Saban affair, arguing that, as in that case, Ben-Gvir was trying after the fact to derail a professionally approved promotion in the investigations branch on grounds that did not meet the legal threshold for overriding the recommendation of the police command.
The protocol shows that he argued that the minister had remained silent for months despite knowing the relevant facts and raised his objections only later, after intervention by the attorney-general’s deputies.
The police and the state largely backed that position. Their representative argued in court that Ben-Gvir’s decision ignored Hauslich’s qualifications, disregarded the senior command’s recommendation, and sent a troubling message that promotion in sensitive police units depends not on professional, apolitical service under the chain of command, but on conformity with the minister’s expectations.
She also stressed that Hauslich had acted under instructions from her superiors and was never the subject of disciplinary or criminal proceedings.
Sarah Ben-Nun contributed to this report.
Source:
www.jpost.com
