IDF reservist Ari Rosenfeld, charged in PM’s office leak, will be released to house arrest

The State Attorney’s Office agrees to allow Ari Rosenfeld, a noncommissioned IDF officer at the center of the Prime Minister’s Office security documents scandal, to be released to house arrest with electronic tagging.

Prosecutors tell the Tel Aviv District Court that their agreement to release Rosenfeld from detention in prison was due to a change in the security services’ evaluation of the danger he poses.

The State Attorney’s Office has until now said that Rosenfeld was exposed to a large amount of classified information during the war as a result of his service in the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate and that releasing him to house arrest could enable him to leak more material. The office notes that the Supreme Court rejected an earlier appeal by Rosenfeld against his ongoing incarceration on those grounds.

“As part of the request for a review [of the ruling], an updated position from the Shin Bet was received, which indicates that, unlike the position presented previously, the danger posed by the NCO can be ignored,” the State Attorney’s Office now tells the court.

Rosenfeld has been in detention for some four months, after he was arrested in late October and charged in November with transferring classified information, an offense that is punishable by up to seven years in prison, as well as theft by an authorized person and obstruction of justice. He was charged together with Eli Feldstein, an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who allegedly leaked a document given to him by Rosenfeld to the Bild German newspaper.