From the Liveblog of
Friday, November 22, 2024
Feldstein’s lawyer: He was acting on behalf of the PMO, and has been abandoned
The lawyer representing Eli Feldstein, an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who was indicted yesterday on a grave charge of harming state security at the heart of a case involving the theft and leaking of classified IDF intel, complains in a TV interview excerpt that his client has been abandoned by the Prime Minister’s Office.
“Eli Feldstein did not act on his own behalf,” attorney Oded Savoray tells Channel 12, in comments excerpted from an interview to be screened in full tomorrow. “He provided advisory services in the Prime Minister’s Office.”
“If there are claims, they should be directed to the Prime Minister’s Office,” Savoray goes on. “It was the Prime Minister’s Office that was acting here. It acted by means of Feldstein. And today Feldstein has been left alone, alone, alone.”
Feldstein was charged yesterday with transferring classified information with the intent to harm the state, a charge that can carry a sentence of life in prison, as well as illicit possession of classified information and obstruction of justice. He has been held in detention for almost a month.
On November 1, when a gag order on the case was partially lifted for the first time, allowing publication of the fact that suspects had been arrested for questioning in connection over the alleged leak of classified documents by Netanyahu’s office, the PMO issued a statement asserting that no one on its staff has been arrested as part of the probe.
Since then, however, the PMO has issued comments seemingly defending Feldstein, saying in a statement last week, “In a democratic country, people are not detained for 20 days in a basement because of a leak while being prevented from meeting a lawyer for days on end, just in order to extract from them false claims against the prime minister.”
In the Knesset on Monday, Netanyahu charged that the State Prosecution was selective in its investigations of leaks, claiming that a flood of “terrible, criminal leaks” from cabinet meetings and security consultations “that do tremendous harm to Israel” were not probed.
“As of this moment, nobody has been investigated and nobody has been arrested [for those leaks]. Nobody’s life has been ruined,” he said, in an implied reference to the ongoing detention of Feldstein.
