Report: IDF’s former top lawyer maintains her disappearance was not staged, she had intended to end her own life

Former military advocate general Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi is maintaining that she had intended to end her own life during her hours-long disappearance on Sunday, even as police suspect she staged a crisis in order to dispose of her phone and any incriminating evidence on it.

Tomer-Yerushalmi is suspected of obstruction of justice over the leak of footage purportedly showing the abuse of a Palestinian prisoner at the Sde Teiman detention camp by IDF reservists last year, and an alleged subsequent cover-up.

“I couldn’t withstand it anymore, the public pressure, the slander and humiliation, the threats to my life and the lives of my family,” she is said to have told police investigators. “Over the past week, my life became hell, so I decided to end my life. I left a letter to my children.”

The police investigator is said to have told the former top military lawyer that he believes she was “bluffing” and that she “simply tried to evade arrest.”

“You put on a great show,” he told her, according to Channel 12.

Tomer-Yerushalmi nevertheless continued to insist that she was telling the truth, telling the investigator that “none of you understand what I’ve been going through recently. I really intended to do it.”

Separately, Ynet reports that Tomer-Yerushalmi has been summoned for additional questioning regarding the leak of the classified Sde Teiman video, the Ynet news outlet reports.

According to the report, Tomer-Yerushalmi was brought back in for another session of questioning after she expressed “repeated interest” about the results of a polygraph test taken by former chief military prosecutor Col. Matan Solomosh.

It says she is being interrogated at a Defense Ministry facility to ensure that the contents of her testimony remain confidential.