David Libai

David Libai ( Hebrew דוד ליבאי; * October 22, 1934 in Tel Aviv ) is an Israeli legal scholar , politician and former minister .

biography

After attending the Ironi Alef High School in Tel Aviv , he completed a law degree at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as part of the Armed Forces Reserve Officer Program . After graduating with a Master of Arts degree from the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Law of Tel Aviv University , he served as Deputy Chief Prosecutor of the Military with a major and later also earned a doctorate ( Ph. D. ) from the Law School from the University of Chicago .

He began his professional career in 1958 in the office of the then Justice Minister Pinchas Rosen , where he was initially responsible for the amnesty department and then spokesman for the minister for some time. In 1960 he was admitted to the bar, but remained in the civil service as chief assistant to Attorney General Colin Gillon and as chief prosecutor at the Public Administration Disciplinary Court. As such, he was a prosecutor in 1963 in the first trial against a Jewish police officer who collaborated with the National Socialists .

It was not until 1964 that he opened his own law firm, worked as a lawyer and, as such, was chairman of the bar association from 1983 to 1985. As a legal scholar, he was also a professor at Tel Aviv University and the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center .

He began his political career in 1977 as chairman of the Avoda Statute Commission . On August 13, 1984, he was elected as its representative for the first time as a member of the Knesset , to which he belonged until his resignation on October 15, 1996. Between 1984 and 1988 he was chairman of the State Control Committee of the Knesset and in this position appointed the so-called Beisky Commission in January 1985, chaired by Judge Moshe Beisky, to investigate the Israeli banking and stock market crisis of 1983.

On July 13, 1992 he was appointed Minister of Justice by Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin and held this office in the subsequent government of Shimon Peres until June 18, 1996. In addition, he was briefly interior minister from June 19 to July 18, 1995 Rabin's cabinet. As Minister of Justice, he appointed commissions to investigate the 1994 massacre caused by Baruch Goldstein in the Grotto of the Patriarchs , the Yemeni child affair and with the Shamgar Commission for the murder of Prime Minister Rabin .

After resigning as a member of parliament and leaving the government, Libai again worked as a lawyer and appeared, among other things, as legal advisor in the fraud proceedings against the founder of the Israeli software company for Signals Intelligence Comverse Technology Kobi Alexander and in the proceedings against the former President Moshe Katzav . However, he resigned this mandate after it became apparent that this was not just an investigation into extortion, but sexual coercion.

He was also a law professor and director of the Institute for Criminology and Criminal Law at Tel Aviv University and was also a member of the press council. For his work as a legal scholar, he was not only awarded the Pinchas Rosen Prize, but in 2005 also received the Ethics Prize from Justice Minister Tzipi Livni .

Despite his extensive withdrawal from government policy, in April 2006 he played a key role in bringing about the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert .