After a trial of more than five years with 138 witnesses, more than 400 exhibits and a trial transcript of 12,000 pages, Judge Aharon Farkash of the Jerusalem District Court has cleared the defendants of all forgery charges. His opinion in the case, handed down on March 14, is 474 pages long.
Of the five defendants originally indicted in 2004, only two remained in the case: Oded Golan, an antiquities collector with one of the most important collections in Israel (he was found guilty of the minor charge of trading in antiquities without a license); and Robert Deutsch, the most prominent antiquities dealer in Israel who has also taught at Haifa University, served as a square supervisor at the archaeological excavation of Megiddo.
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