Six years after arrest, accused pedophile Malka Leifer to face extradition hearing Monday

Almost six years after her arrest, the Jerusalem District Court will convene an extradition hearing Monday morning for Malka Leifer who faces dozens of sexual abuse allegations in Australia. 

The hearing is expected to be largely procedural, given that the court already ruled in May that the principal of the ultra-Orthodox Adath Israel Girls' School in Melbourne was mentally competent to stand trial.  

The ultra-Orthodox former educator was arrested six years ago after fleeing Melbourne in 2008 when three sisters who attended the religious girls' school said that Leifer had sexually abused them.  

But in 2016, she was released when a panel of psychologists found that "Leifer suffers from schizoaffective disorder as well as psychotic depression and is therefore incapable of prosecution,” according to her attorneys. 

She was rearrested in 2018, however, when police began secretly filming her on suspicion that she had faked her mental incompetence, reviewing more than 200 hours of footage showing Liefer functioning normally despite her lawyers' claims that her condition rendered her incapacitated.

The prosecution will open the hearing on Monday with a 30-minute statement which will include graphic extracts from local Australian police reports filed by sisters Dassi Erlich, Nicole Meyer and Elie Sapper in 2011 against Mr. Leifer, a source close to the case told Israeli media outlets.

Leifer's lawyer Nick Kaufman hinted in a Supreme Court hearing on Sunday that he planned to argue that his client had not sexually abused his students because some of the alleged incidents had occurred when the sisters were nearly 18 years old.

He also told reporters after Sunday's hearing that Australia and Israel would have to prove that the alleged victims did not consent to the sexual acts that are the subject of this case. 

Leifer is being prosecuted on 74 charges of child sex abuse in Australia.