Demjanjuk's lawyer to defend former Israeli Prez

Demjanjuk`s lawyer to defend former Israeli Prez Jerusalem: An associate of the Israeli attorney who defended an accused Nazi-era war criminal says that the maverick lawyer will defend disgraced former Israeli President Moshe Katsav.

Attorney Tal Malik said Sunday that Yoram Sheftel will represent Katsav, who plans to appeal a seven year sentence for rape. Katsav began serving in December.

In the 1990s, Sheftel overturned an Israeli court's death sentence for John Demjanjuk. In 2011, a German court convicted Demjanjuk of being an accessory to the murder of 28,000 people while guarding a death camp in Poland.

Katsav was sentenced in 2010 of raping an employee when he was a cabinet minister in 1998, and of sexual offenses involving two other women when he was president from 2000 to 2007. Sheftel denounced his conviction as a farce.

Bureau Report