JERUSALEM (AP) – Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal challenging the extradition of a former teacher wanted in Australia on charges of child sexual abuse, paving the way for her to be prosecuted after a six-year legal saga.
Malka Leifer, a former educator accused of sexually abusing several former students at a Jewish school in Melbourne, has been fighting Israel’s extradition since 2014. Leifer maintains her innocence and the six-year legal battle surrounding her extradition has strained Israeli-Australian relations. .
Supreme Court judges said the ruling ends “the appellant’s decision as extraditable” to stand trial in Australia.
The Justice Ministry said in a statement that the ruling “brings us a significant step towards the extradition of Malka Leifer to Australia” and that the ministry “will continue to make every effort to expedite the extradition of Malka Leifer to Australia because she can be prosecuted for crimes she is accused of committing ”.
Israeli Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn praised the court’s decision and said he would immediately sign the extradition order.
“After long and torturous years, the time has come to do justice to Leifer’s victims,” he wrote on Twitter.
Critics, including the alleged victims of Leifer, have accused Israeli authorities of dragging the lawsuit for too long.
In September, a Jerusalem court approved Leifer’s extradition to Australia after the country’s highest court upheld the sentence, which was mentally fit to be tried.
Earlier this year, an Israeli psychiatric group determined that Leifer was lying about suffering from a mental illness that allegedly made her unfit to be prosecuted. As a result of the findings, the Israeli Ministry of Justice said it would decide to expedite his extradition to face 74 charges of child sexual abuse.
Three sisters – Dassi Erlich, Nicole Meyer and Elly Sapper – have accused Leifer of abusing them while they were students at an ultra-Orthodox school in Melbourne. It is said that there are other victims.
“We have a long journey ahead of us, a journey that really should have started nine years ago,” Meyer said. “If I could give a message to all the survivors, I’ll come, find support, share your story and take these abusers off the street.”
The Associated Press does not usually identify alleged victims of sexual abuse, but the sisters have spoken publicly about their allegations against Leifer.
When the allegations began to emerge in 2008, Leifer, of Israeli descent, left school and returned to Israel, where she has lived ever since.
Her lawyer, Nick Kaufman, appeared to acknowledge that her client has exhausted her legal options to fight extradition, but expressed hope that, if convicted, she could serve her prison sentence in Israel.
Kaufman said the court noted Leifer’s “unique nature of her religious way of life” as an ultra-Orthodox Jew and acknowledged that “it would present considerable difficulties for her in an Australian prison.”
“If Malka Leifer were convicted and sentenced to a custodial sentence, we expect the competent authorities to accede to a future request that fulfills that sentence in Israel,” he said.