JPost editor: Everything ‘turned upside down’ in questioning; I received ‘nothing’ for Qatar coverage

In his first public comments since he was named as a suspect in Qatargate, Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Zvika Klein says he could not have imagined “in my worst nightmares” his arrest this week and asserts that he received absolutely no benefit from his coverage of Qatar.

“This week, I was arrested,” he writes in a column in The Jerusalem Post. “I was placed under house arrest. In an instant, I went from a public servant to a suspect. Not even in my worst nightmares could I have imagined this.”

Klein says that his interview last year with the prime minister of Qatar was “proudly published in this paper. Nothing was hidden. Everything was done with full transparency and at the highest journalistic standards.”

The editor writes that he “received nothing in return. No benefits, no payment, no promises. I came back to Israel, and apparently one fact puzzled the police: I got nothing in return.”

Klein says that he agreed to speak to the police about his experience, “but then everything turned upside down,” saying his phone was seized, he was blocked from being able to contact his family and he was prohibited from being able to speak publicly and clear his name.

“My good name was damaged, even before the truth could come out,” he writes. “The time will come when the full story can be told. But it was important for me to speak to you – the readers – now, and say: I am here. We are here.”