Police ask court to extend ban on Urich contacting PM by 60 more days

A police investigator tells the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court that the presence of Jonatan Urich, a senior aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the Prime Minister’s Office would constitute a threat to state security due to his work with Qatar.

The investigator makes his comments in a court hearing over the police request to extend restrictions on Urich — banning him from contacting other figures linked to the Qatargate affair or anyone working in the Prime Minister’s Office, including Netanyahu himself — for another 60 days.

The police investigator says that some of the investigative actions that the police promised to complete before September 10 have been carried out, but that other actions “require the approval of the most senior officials in the Justice Ministry.”

The investigator is possibly alluding to a police desire to question under caution cabinet ministers, and possibly the prime minister, over the affair and Urich’s role in it.

On August 19, the Lod-Central District Court ruled in favor of a police appeal requesting that the restrictions on Urich be extended until today. That ruling overturned the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court ruling of August 15 against extending those restrictions.

The district court judge at the time criticized the lower court’s decision, writing explicitly that he did not share its position that there was an absence of reasonable suspicion that Urich committed the crimes of bribery and breach of trust, of which he is accused in the affair.