Netanyahu’s Likud claims arrest of PM’s aide over Qatargate is ‘fabricated probe’ by AG and Shin Bet

Following the arrest of two of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top aides and with the premier reportedly en route to testify to police, his ruling Likud party rails against “fabricated investigations,” alleging without evidence that the Attorney General’s Office and Shin Bet security service are working to “carry out a coup d’état through arrest warrants.”

The Shin Bet and police are currently investigating members of Netanyahu’s inner circle over alleged ties between them and Doha as part of the so-called Qatargate probe.

“The thuggish arrest of Yonatan Urich is a new low in the political hunt to overthrow a right-wing prime minister and to prevent the dismissal of the failed Shin Bet chief,” Likud says in a statement, referring to one of the aides arrested this morning.

“After the fabricated investigations initiated by the Attorney General’s Office and the Shin Bet chief into the falsification of minutes in the Prime Minister’s Office and the blackmailing of an officer in the Prime Minister’s Military Secretariat blew up in their faces, they invented another new fabricated affair about a Qatari, which will also explode very quickly.”

After a court lifted a gag order on the matter last November, it was reported that Netanyahu’s chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, was suspected of forgery and fraud over the illegal altering of records in the Prime Minister’s Office. He was also suspected of blackmailing an IDF officer to allegedly alter minutes from wartime meetings by threatening him with a sensitive video recording.

“The attempt to terrorize Jonatan Urich in order to extract from him false testimony against the prime minister through blackmail with threats and a false arrest is another criminal act of a frightened legal clique,” the Likud statement continues — accusing the Attorney General’s Office and Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar of “conducting futile investigations in the dark under a gag order, in an attempt to prevent the dismissal of the Shin Bet chief, using Urich and others as cannon fodder.”

“Their goal is to carry out a coup d’état through arrest warrants. This is not an investigation. This is not law enforcement. This is an attempted assassination of democracy and an attempt to replace the will of the people with the rule of bureaucrats,” the party adds.

Earlier this month, the cabinet voted to fire Bar in a move that was frozen by the High Court. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who the government is also working to dismiss, warned that the ouster faced legal difficulties, in part due to the ongoing Shin Bet probe of Qatargate.