Top official suspended over sex scandal

AFP - Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has suspended his chief of staff pending an inquiry into allegations he solicited sex from a job applicant, the official Wafa news agency said Sunday.
  
Rafiq al-Husseini was suspended from his duties while a commission appointed by Abbas examines the charges against him, it said.
  
Husseini found himself in the eye of a sex scandal last week after Israeli television aired a graphic video showing him caught on a hidden camera allegedly soliciting sex from a female job applicant.
  
Husseini said later on Sunday that he had put his "fate in the hands of president Abbas and the committee of inquiry".
  
Speaking to reporters in Ramallah, he said he had falled "victim to a trap set by members of a gang linked to Israeli intelligence."
  
"Their goal was to help continue the fight against corruption and the Israeli occupation in Jerusalem," said Husseini, who was reading from a statement.
  
The compromising video was shot by a former Palestinian intelligence officer who has accused the Western-backed Palestinian Authority of widespread corruption.
  
The PA has been up in arms over the report, with the attorney general threatening to sue Israel's Channel 10 for "circulating lies and false claims."