president Moshe Katsav was formally charged on Thursday with several counts of rape, sexual harassment and an indecent act, the justice ministry said. The move follows a March 8 announcement by prosecutors that they would indict Katsav who was forced to step down over the charges two years ago. Katsav has been indicted on two counts of rape, forcible indecent assault and abuse of power against an employee at his office while he was tourism minister, the ministry said. “I am the victim of a lynching organised by the judicial counsellor of the government (Menahem) Mazuz, the police, politicians and the media,” Katsav said in a televised press conference on March 12. The indictment marked the latest chapter in an affair that began in July 2006, when then-president Katsav filed a complaint with Attorney General Menahem Mazuz alleging a former employee was trying to blackmail him. If convicted of rape, Katsav could face a jail term of up to 16 years and will become Israel's first head of state convicted of sex offences. Katsav's predecessor, the late Ezer Weizman, was forced to resign in 2000 after revelations that he received around $450,000 dollars from a French millionaire while a minister and an MP. Israel could use ballistic missiles against Iran Ballistic missiles could be Israel's weapon of choice against Iranian nuclear facilities if it decides on a preemptive attack and deems airstrikes too risky, according to a report by a Washington think-tank. Israel is widely assumed to have Jericho missiles capable of hitting Iran with an accuracy of a few dozen meters (yards) from target. Such a capability would be free of warplanes' main drawbacks – limits on fuel and ordnance, and perils to pilots. Extrapolating from analyst assessments that the most advanced Jerichos carry 750 kg conventional warheads, Abdullah Toukan of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said 42 missiles would be enough to “severely damage or demolish” Iran's core nuclear sites at Natanz, Esfahan and Arak. “If the Jericho III is fully developed and its accuracy is quite high then this scenario could look much more feasible than using combat aircraft,” he said in the March 14 report, titled “Study on a Possible Israeli Strike on Iran's Nuclear Development Facilities”. Israel, whose jets bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981 and mounted a similar sortie over Syria in 2007, has hinted that it could forcibly deny Iran the means to make an atomic bomb.
