Judge said to extend remand of IDF reserves officer suspected in intel leaks case
Suspect’s lawyer said to slam ‘political arrest’ as investigators probe alleged transfer of stolen military documents to foreign press; police reportedly raid PM’s office
A court has ordered that a suspect arrested in a high-profile case involving leaks of classified documents revolving around the Prime Minister’s Office be held in custody until early next week, Hebrew media reported on Thursday, as investigators probe the alleged transfer of stolen military intelligence to foreign media outlets.
The unnamed suspect, identified by Ynet news as a reserves intelligence officer, is one of five people arrested in the affair, which involves allegations that the documents were fed to foreign press as part of a campaign to dampen support for a hostage deal and ceasefire in Gaza.
During a remand hearing in the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court on Thursday, the suspect’s lawyer argued that his client was innocent of allegations that he had harmed state security, according to Ynet, and charged that the arrest was “political.”
Nonetheless, the suspect was ordered kept behind bars for another four days.
Much of the case remains under gag order and the only suspect to be named so far is Eli Feldstein, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The other four suspects are all connected to the defense establishment.
According to a Channel 12 news report, the Shin Bet suspects that an “infrastructure” was put in place that was able to access “all the classified material held by IDF Military Intelligence,” and that “it extracted — and may have intended to continue to extract in the future — classified material that could expose the capabilities of the entire intelligence community” — encompassing the IDF, the Shin Bet, and the Mossad.
The exposure of this material — as happened with an article published by the German Bild newspaper in September— while evading military censorship endangers the lives of IDF soldiers and harms efforts to free the hostages, the TV report said, citing what it said is the assessment of the defense establishment and of the investigators of the case.
A leaked document is said to have formed the basis of the Bild article, which said Hamas was drawing out hostage talks as a form of psychological warfare on Israel.
A second, widely discredited article in the London-based Jewish Chronicle — which was later withdrawn — claimed a document uncovered by the IDF in Gaza showed that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar planned to spirit hostages out of the Strip via Egypt.
Israeli media and other observers expressed skepticism about those articles, which appeared to bolster Netanyahu’s position in the hostage release-ceasefire talks and to absolve him of blame for their failure. The content of the pair of reports regarding Hamas’s strategy was nearly identical to talking points made by Netanyahu in interviews, statements at cabinet meetings, and press conferences shortly before and after the articles appeared in early September, including a claim that Sinwar sought to smuggle Israeli hostages out of Gaza through the Philadelphi Corridor which separates the Strip from Egypt.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted during Hamas’s brutal October 7, 2023, massacre remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Meanwhile, Channel 12 also reported that police carried out an unprecedented raid on Netanyahu’s office on Saturday, though it was unclear if the operation was connected to the probe into leaks of IDF intelligence documents or to a second investigation that was revealed Tuesday, apparently linked to reported efforts by the premier to doctor minutes of war meetings.
