AG set to indict Israel Prisons chief in probe linked to Ben Gvir

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has decided to file an indictment against Israel Prison Service Commissioner Kobi Yaakobi, after nearly a year of deliberation on the matter.

Yaakobi will be charged with breach of trust and obstructing an investigation, Hebrew media reported on Tuesday. He is suspected of informing Avishai Muallem, a former senior police detective in the West Bank, of a covert probe in which Muallem was a suspect.

In July, the State Attorney’s Office first announced it was considering filing charges, subject to a hearing, against the top warden.

Muallem, who has since been indicted, was being probed on suspicion of papering over investigations into Jewish nationalist violence in a bid to curry favor with National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

Yaakobi, who served as Ben Gvir’s security secretary at the time before moving to the Prison Service, is suspected of leaking the probe’s existence to Muallem over a wiretapped phone call.

He implied last year that he would resign if indicted.

Despite the report, Yaakobi’s lawyer Uri Corb denied he’d been informed of any decision to launch an indictment, and said the commissioner’s legal team had sent the attorney general and state attorney a letter earlier that day, containing “dramatic” information that must be reviewed before any such decision could be made.

“The decision to file an indictment is not known to us,” the attorney said, adding that the report “appears to be an attempt to establish facts on the ground and to pressure officials to file a baseless indictment.”

“We hope the information will be examined in depth, as they told us [it would be], and if that’s the case, then the only possible decision will be to close the case. Beyond that, we have nothing to add at this stage,” he concluded.

Ben Gvir, in response to the reports, issued a video statement in which he disparaged Baharav-Miara as “the dismissed, anti-democratic, criminal adviser” – a play on the attorney general’s official title of “legal adviser,” and a reference to government attempts to fire her, which have been blocked by the High Court.

The far-right minister said Baharav-Miara “works again and again against everything good for the State of Israel.” He rejected any charges against Yaakobi as a set-up, asserting: “This is the best commissioner in the history of the country.”

“I call on the Prison Service commissioner, a hero of Israel, to remain in his position and continue the important work,” Ben Gvir said, adding that Yaakobi “brought about a true revolution in the Prison Service, fully implemented the policy and restored deterrence to the [prison] wings” after “dozens of years of negligence in which the terrorists ran the prisons in practice.”

Under Yaakobi’s leadership, conditions for prisoners have seriously deteriorated, especially in facilities that hold Palestinian security prisoners.

According to a report last year from the Public Defender’s Office, security inmates are given meager food rations, beaten regularly by guards and held in unsanitary conditions that have allowed diseases to spread quickly in crowded, tiny cells. Criminal prisoners, despite enjoying slightly better treatment and larger food portions, still suffer from chronic overcrowding.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.