PM’s office: Suspects in leaked documents scandal being pressured to implicate Netanyahu

In a none-too-subtle attack on law enforcement agencies, the Prime Minister’s Office implies that suspects in the leaked documents scandal have been pressured to implicate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the affair.

“We are greatly pained that they are destroying the lives of young men with baseless claims in order to harm right-wing governance,” the PMO says in a statement to the press.

“In a democratic country people are not detained for 20 days in a basement because of a leak while being prevented from meeting a lawyer for days on end, just in order to extract from them false claims against the prime minister.”

Investigators suspect that service members unlawfully removed sensitive intelligence documents and handed them over to a spokesman working with the prime minister, who then allegedly leaked them to the foreign press, endangering intelligence sources.

Earlier today, the attorney for one of the IDF soldiers suspected of having a role in the affair said that spokesman Eli Feldstein, the main suspect in the case, had told the soldier he had passed the materials on to Netanyahu, who had asked for more and said he planned to “clear out an entire day” for the matter.

Feldstein has been in detention since October 27, for part of that time without access to a lawyer, and his remand will be reviewed again on Wednesday.

The PMO asserts that “this abuse is even more outrageous” given that there have been no criminal investigations into what it alleges is the “deluge of criminal leaks” from the security cabinet and the hostage negotiation team during the course of the current conflict.

“These criminal leaks exposed to Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas sensitive security information and did great damage to Israeli security and the effort to release the hostages,” the PMO asserts. It does not cite any specific leak.