Netanyahu aide accused in documents scandal released to house arrest after 1.5 months
Supreme Court rejects state appeal against Eli Feldstein’s conditional release, saying little danger posed by it, but keeps NCO who played central role in affair in detention
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
Eli Feldstein, a key defendant in the Prime Minister’s Office classified documents leak scandal, was released to house arrest on Monday, after some 45 days in detention.
His lawyers confirmed his release to the Times of Israel, as journalists at the scene photographed him exiting the jail facility along with his parents.
Feldstein, an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been held in custody since he was arrested on October 27 on suspicion of leaking highly classified military intelligence. He was charged in November with leaking classified information in order to harm state security.
The Tel Aviv District Court said on Monday that Feldstein could be released to house arrest with an electronic monitoring device, after the Supreme Court rejected the state’s request to keep him in detention.
Under the terms of the house arrest, Feldsteing is also prohibited from using a telephone or electronic communication of any sort, and the Supreme Court ruled that security services are entitled to intercept any form of communications he might conduct if they suspect that he is violating the terms of his house arrest.
He is also barred from leaving the country and has been ordered to surrender his passport within 48 hours through a designated third-party guarantor.
אלי פלדשטיין
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Responding to the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Tel Aviv-Jaffa District Court requested that the Maoz Unit of the Israel Prison Service submit a feasibility paper for how to comply with it. Judge Ala Masarwa gave the IPS two days to file its paper.
Among other “technical” issues, the prison service reportedly needed to install a new phone line at the Feldstein home to facilitate the electronic tracker before he could be released.
The ruling came in response to an appeal by the state against the Tel Aviv-Jaffa District Court’s decision to release Feldstein to house arrest earlier this month.
The court accepted, however, the state’s appeal against the release of an IDF reservist noncommissioned officer who is another central defendant in the scandal and has been charged with leaking classified information.
The affair centers around what prosecutors allege were Feldstein’s efforts to sway the public opinion surrounding the negotiations for the release of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza in a more favorable direction for Netanyahu after six hostages were murdered by the terror group in late August.
Feldstein leaked a highly classified document to the German tabloid Bild in early September, which ostensibly detailed Hamas’s priorities and tactics in hostage negotiations (though it later became apparent the document was written by lower-level officials in the terror group and did not necessarily reflect the leadership’s position).
In Monday’s ruling, Justice Alex Stein ruled that the state had already sustained the blow to its security from the information Feldstein leaked and that he doesn’t have any more classified information to reveal.
The danger to the state posed by releasing Feldstein to house arrest is therefore low, he said.
Stein rejected the appeal of the IDF reservist noncommissioned officer who is also at the heart of the case and who leaked the classified documents to Feldstein in the first place.
Stein wrote that since the NCO was exposed to a great deal of classified information during his work for the IDF’s Military Intelligence data security department and since he has leaked such documents in the past, he might do so again, further endangering state security.
The judge wrote that the NCO saw himself, “and continues to see himself,” as a “kind of vigilante of the Intelligence Corps, an ‘independent contractor’ who, when necessary, is allowed to take the reins and establish direct communication channels between himself and government officials in ways he sees fit and while completely eliminating the IDF chain of command and information security procedures.”
While he ordered that the NCO be kept behind bars, Stein said the man may be able to appeal if circumstances change.
