Senior aides to Netanyahu request cancellation of witness intimidation charges

Lawyers for Jonatan Urich and Ofer Golan, both advisers to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Wednesday filed a request with the Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court for indictments against the two to be annulled due to what they allege are severe flaws in the investigative process.

The two were indicted, together with a third Netanyahu aide, Yisrael Einhorn, in February 2025 on charges of witness intimidation for having sent a car with a megaphone in 2019 to the home of Shlomo Filber, a key witness in Netanyahu’s corruption trial, in order to harass him as part of an apparent effort to get him to retract his testimony against the prime minister.

Urich and Golan’s lawyers, Amit Hadad and Noah Milstein, described on Wednesday the incident as “trivial” and asserted in their request that Filber was not at home at the time and never filed a police complaint over harassment or intimidation.

The lawyers alleged that the police unlawfully broke into the telephones of several subjects of their investigation into the incident without court orders and, at times, “in contravention of the terms established in the orders that were issued.”

“The conduct of the criminal proceedings against the applicants is in fundamental contradiction to the principles of justice, equality and legal fairness, and raises a real concern that the proceedings are being conducted on the basis of the results of an investigation that was born in sin, while seriously violating fundamental rights,” the lawyers alleged.

Urich and Einhorn are both also suspects in the Bild leaked documents case and the Qatargate case, with Urich likely to be charged over his role in the Bild affair.

The prosecutors alleged that the three men arranged for two people to drive a vehicle with a loudspeaker to Filber’s home in Petah Tikva. They allegedly parked next to his house and began playing the message “Momo, be a man, go and tell the truth, Momo Filber, [about] what they did to you for you to lie against the prime minister, what they promised you.”

Another message played over the loudspeaker was: “The left is using you to topple Likud, Momo. Hear what you yourself said before the police pressured you.”

Also played was an interview Filber had given in which he was heard saying that decisions Netanyahu made while serving as communications minister, with Filber serving as the ministry’s director general, were “professional,” contradicting his testimony that Netanyahu had acted unlawfully.

After his arrest in 2018, Filber agreed to become a state witness and testified that the prime minister had instructed him to make decisions that financially benefited the Bezeq telecom giant, incriminating himself in the process of his testimony.

The prosecution alleges Netanyahu ordered Filber to make those decisions as part of an illicit quid pro quo agreement between the prime minister and Bezeq owner Shaul Elovitch.

Under cross-examination in court, however, Filber contradicted his original testimony, saying Netanyahu had not given him any instructions to benefit Bezeq, before reversing himself again and telling the court that his original testimony was accurate.

The State Attorney’s Office has sought to revoke the state witness agreement made with Filber, potentially exposing him to prosecution.

Filber has previously accused police interrogators of trying to manipulate him during their investigation.

During testimony in court, Netanyahu has strongly denied the existence of any illicit agreement between himself and Elovitch.