Prosecution witnesses from a private investigation into the mental health of alleged child sex offender Malka Leifer will have to deliver evidence in writing, the Jerusalem District Court has ruled.
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Leifer's extradition trial is determining whether the former principal of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish girls' school in Melbourne should be returned to Australia to face court on 74 charges of child sex abuse.
A private investigation carried out in December 2017 provided video footage countering the defence's claim that Leifer is mentally unfit to stand trial, instead showing she was fully functional in her daily life.
In what was scheduled to be a full day in an open court, Sunday's hearing in Jerusalem was closed for one hour and ended in less than two hours.
While two prosecution witnesses appeared to provide evidence for cross-examination, Judge Lomp ruled they would submit in writing in order to save time.
The Chief Executive Director of Kol V'oz, an NGO preventing child sex abuse in the Jewish community, Manny Waks described the decision as a seemingly administrative process and "yet another hollow hearing."
"[It is] frustrating to many, but most of all the alleged victims themselves," Waks told AAP following the hearing.
Dassi Erlich, one of the alleged victims who was a student of Leifer during her time as principal at Melbourne's Adass Israel School, told AAP there are positive and negative aspects of the decision.
"On one hand we think it's positive because it means that things will hopefully speed up, less witnesses, less time, less court hearings," Erlich said from Melbourne.
"On the other hand it means all the prosecution's witnesses ... won't be heard in court, [but] the defence ... they're absolutely going to have their witnesses heard in court."
As far as Erlich knows, the defence will also be allowed to present as many witnesses as they like against the findings of the investigation, prolonging the court hearings even further.
Waks further stated he didn't understand the logic behind the court's decision.
"With what we have seen until now, anything can happen and the motivations for those reasons are still at this stage murky," he said.
He referred to the ongoing investigations of people meddling in the court process and evidence, including Israel Deputy Health Minister Ya'acov Litzman.
Litzman was summoned by Israeli police in February due to his alleged workings to obtain false psychiatric papers deeming Leifer mentally unfit to face extradition.
The next hearing is set for May 15.
Australian Associated Press
