Former Police Investigations Branch chief Moshe Mizrahi told Haaretz recently that the plea deal struck by former president Moshe Katsav over alleged sex crimes is a sign that the notion of equality under the law is 'dead.'

"The same mouth that turned Katsav into [serial rapist] Benny Sela, as someone wrote, then made him cuddly in one fell swoop," Mizrahi said, in a special interview with Haaretz following his retirement.

Katsav agreed to plea guilty to sexual harassment, forcible indecent assault and harassing a witness, as part of a plea bargain that struck rape charges from the indictment and handed him only a suspended jail sentence.

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"Take the Katsav case, look at what mechanisms were put into play there. Take the Ramon case, which in the end was just about one kiss, look at the tremendous organization and efforts that were used against the system of law enforcement, against the complainant," the retired policeman raged.

Mizrahi said these cases show that there is no longer equality before the law: "We actually need to treat public figures more harshly due to the abilities [for evading justice] they have had in recent decades, this is not Buzaglo [the so-called test according to which the authorities should treat the "VIPs" of the land the same way as they treat anyone else], which died long ago. Now with this plea agreement there is mass desecration of this principle's dead body, good God!"

Mizrahi described the heads of the law and order system as lacking the necessary courage to deal with problems the Katsav affair raised.

"There is a process of severe and continuous erosion of the law and order system. I'll even give you quotes from top prosecutors: 'I would flee from this case as fast as I could.' Or, these are cases that I call 'career burying.'"

Mizrahi opposed Attorney General Menachem Mazuz's position on the Greek Island affair, involving former prime minister Ariel Sharon in an alleged plan to use millions of dollars in bribes to build a tourist resort on an island in the Aegean Sea.

The retired policeman stated Mazuz "disparaged the prosecution over closing the case and defined us as in the business of framing people. When I hear that this is today being said about him, I feel like laughing bitterly. You [Mazuz] in fact did this in such a hard-hitting way to your own people. And who did you move? Those who had the unusual courage to put their hands into the fire!"