Israeli President Isaac Herzog has received a letter from US President Donald Trump urging him to consider granting a pardon to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Herzog’s office said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu has been facing a long-running corruption trial, and Trump has repeatedly asked for a pardon for his close ally. Netanyahu denies the charges and has pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n
“While I absolutely respect the independence of the Israeli Justice System, and its requirements, I believe that this ‘case’ against Bibi, who has fought alongside me for a long time, including against the very tough adversary of Israel, Iran, is a political, unjustified prosecution,” Trump said in the letter shared by Herzog’s office.<\/p>\n
The office said that anyone seeking a presidential pardon must submit a formal request in accordance with the established procedures.<\/p>\n
During Trump’s visit to Israel in October, he had also urged Herzog to pardon the prime minister in an address to parliament in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 in three cases, including allegations of receiving nearly 700,000 shekels ($211,832) in gifts from businessmen.<\/p>\n
Despite the largely ceremonial role of the Israeli presidency, Herzog has the authority to pardon convicted criminals under unusual circumstances.<\/p>\n
However, Netanyahu’s trial, which began in 2020, has not yet concluded, and he has pleaded not guilty to all charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israeli President Isaac Herzog has received a letter from US President Donald Trump urging him to consider granting a pardon to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Herzog’s office said on Wednesday. Netanyahu has been facing a long-running corruption trial, and Trump has repeatedly asked for a pardon for his close ally. Netanyahu denies the charges and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57116,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57114\/revisions\/57116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}