In bombshell, top IDF lawyer nixes charges against troops accused of abusing Palestinian detainee in 2024

In a bombshell decision, Military Advocate General Maj. Gen. Itai Ofir has ordered the cancellation of an indictment against five IDF reserve soldiers who were accused of severely abusing a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman detention facility in 2024.

According to the indictment filed last year, the five soldiers severely beat and assaulted the prisoner after he was brought to the detention facility, leaving him with severe injuries, including broken ribs and an internal tear in his rectum.

The IDF says the decision to cancel the charges follows “significant developments” in the case since the indictment was filed and a review of all considerations, evidence and relevant circumstances.

Among the reasons listed by the IDF for canceling the charges are “complexity regarding the existing evidence”; the release of the detainee back to Gaza in the October 2025 ceasefire; “the conduct of senior officials in the Military Advocate General’s (MAG) Corps and in the IDF’s law enforcement system in this case, and its exceptional and unprecedented circumstances” — an apparent reference to former MAG Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, who leaked a surveillance video to Channel 12 news while the indictments were being prepared; and “procedural difficulties” regarding the transfer of investigative materials from a police investigation, “in a manner that harms the defendants’ right to a fair trial.”

“The accumulation of all these exceptional circumstances, and their impact on the fundamental and basic right to a fair trial, requires, in the view of the military advocate general, the cancellation of the indictment,” the IDF says.

The military says Ofir updated IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir on the decision, and that Zamir “strengthens, appreciates and backs the military advocate general and expressed to him his appreciation for the process carried out since he entered the position.”

The IDF says that “in light of the serious professional failure that was revealed,” Zamir also “instructed that lessons be learned and that all necessary steps be taken to prevent similar cases in the future.”

Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned from the military over the leak, and several other top officials in the MAG Corps were suspended from service. The IDF says that Zamir has instructed that the “personnel proceedings” be completed as soon as possible.