Likud campaign manager and Netanyahu family spokesman Ofer Golan and party spokesman Jonatan Urich appeal to the Supreme Court against a ruling earlier this month by the Tel Aviv District Court allowing police to obtain the information contained on their phones.
Likud spokesman Jonatan Urich speaks at a Central Elections Committee meeting at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, April 3, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
The court green-lighted the police searches of the devices in the investigation into alleged witness tampering.
Golan and Urich allegedly hired a van to blast slogans through a loudspeaker outside the home of Shlomo Filber, a former Likud campaign manager and confidant of the prime minister who has testified against Netanyahu in a corruption case.
Filber is a key witness in Case 4000, in which Netanyahu is alleged to have advanced regulatory decisions benefiting Shaul Elovitch, the controlling shareholder in telecom giant Bezeq, in exchange for causing the Elovitch-owned Walla news site to be more positive in its coverage of Netanyahu.
“Police have gotten used to breaking into phones every day,” their lawyers say in a statement. “Police, which are in charge of protecting the law and the citizens, are trampling it while severely harming the rights of detainees. The court must put an end to this.”
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