Top Israeli cop accused of sexual assault

A top Israeli policeman and a contender to be the country’s police commissioner, Major General Uri Bar-Lev, is facing complaints of sexual assault by two women.

The first accusation surfaced last week, when a woman known as “O” complained to police that Bar-Lev had sexually assaulted her at a conference at the Red Sea resort of Eilat two years ago.

Then a second woman, known as “M”, accused him of raping her four years ago. According to reports, she decided to file her complaint after hearing that O had made an accusation. Bar-Lev, who is married, has denied sexually assaulting O and claims he had consensual sex with M five years ago.

But a third woman, “S”, an alleged long-term lover of Bar-Lev’s and a friend of M’s, was detained by police on suspicion of having drugged M before a sexual encounter in a central Israel hotel. This followed, according to media reports, a request from Bar-Lev to S to supply another woman for a threesome.

This week police investigators brought the two women together to confront one another with their conflicting accounts. According to M, she was drugged and enticed into the sexual encounter; according to S, the sex was entirely consensual.

For  his part, Bar-Lev says the timing of the accusations are not coincidental and are part of a conspiracy to prevent him from securing the country’s top job.

Read the stories on Hareetz.com and the Guardian.