Release restrictions on Braverman expire after court sets hearing for tomorrow

The restrictive release conditions on Tzachi Braverman — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff who is being investigated on suspicion of interfering in an investigation — expired early this morning after the judge presiding over the case said the police filed their request to extend the restrictions too late.

The police filed their request to the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court to extend the restrictions until March 10 at noon yesterday, and asked for a temporary extension without a hearing until the court could make a ruling.

Braverman — who was designated to be ambassador to the United Kingdom in September but has yet to take up the post — is barred from leaving the country, and cannot contact Netanyahu or other officials in the Prime Minister’s Office as conditions for his release from detention.

In response to the request, Judge Menachem Mizrachi accused police of filing their extension request too late for the court to be able to hold a hearing before the restrictions expired. Instead he said a hearing on the extension request hearing would take place tomorrow.

The police subsequently appealed to the Central District Court against this decision, and the hearing for that appeal is currently underway.

A spokesperson for Braverman did not immediately say whether Netanyahu’s chief of staff had contacted the prime minister or anyone else on the no-contact list in the time after the restrictions expired.

He is being investigated on suspicion of interfering with an investigation and other crimes, in connection with allegations that Braverman told Eli Feldstein, a spokesperson for Netanyahu, that he could quash a military investigation into Feldstein over the leak of a classified document to the German newspaper Bild.