Lawyers for ex-Shin Bet official accuse State Comptroller of overreach, say client won’t appear before probe

Lawyers representing one of the two former senior Shin Bet officials summoned by the State Comptroller’s Office last night accuse the comptroller of acting without legal authority, charging in a sharply worded letter that the office is conducting an unlawful investigation into the events of October 7.

Attorneys Dov Gilad Cohen and Afi Bartal write that the summons “has no basis in law,” arguing that State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman’s investigative committee was never properly authorized and has no jurisdiction to demand documents or compel testimony from their client.

According to the attorneys, the State Comptroller failed to issue the required public notice mandated by law, opened its inquiry contrary to the legal provisions governing such probes, and is attempting to review sensitive classified material that only a military-appointed committee is legally empowered to examine.

They further state that on the date of the comptroller’s request, their client will be abroad on a trip that has been planned months in advance.

The lawyers also point to recent government decisions establishing a dedicated investigative committee under the authority of the Military Advocate General to handle all materials relating to the failures surrounding October 7. That body’s mandate – including classification authority – supersedes any parallel effort by the comptroller, they say.

The attorneys warn that the committee’s practice of attaching classified and sensitive materials to its correspondence, and making sweeping requests, effectively pressures recipients to “declassify” such materials on their own – something they say is both illegal and impossible for their client to do.

“For all the reasons detailed above, the time is not ripe to schedule a meeting between you and our client,” they conclude.

The pushback from the former Shin Bet officials marks the newest escalation in the ongoing confrontation between the State Comptroller and the defense establishment, following yesterday’s announcement that the office had invoked a clause allowing criminal sanctions – including up to two years’ imprisonment – for failure to comply with a summons.

Englman has for months accused the IDF and Shin Bet of obstructing his broad investigation into the systemic failures that enabled Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, the only state-sanctioned comprehensive probe currently underway. Military officials, including IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, have maintained that the comptroller’s efforts interfere with ongoing war-related operational reviews.