Shin Bet official detained over classified leak released to house arrest
Court rejects authorities’ request that the suspect be held at home for 30 days, deciding instead on just seven; bureaucratic slip-up means he won’t be supervised
A Shin Bet security service official, detained for passing classified information to journalists and a Likud government minister, was released to house arrest on Wednesday.
The Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court rejected a request by the Shin Bet and the Justice Ministry’s Department of Internal Police Investigations that the suspect, who was arrested last Wednesday, be held under house arrest for 30 days.
Instead, the judge decided on seven days, declaring that the crimes of which the suspect is accused are not at a “high level of seriousness,” such that would require that he remain in prolonged custody.
Due to a gag order on some details of the case, the suspect can only be identified in media reports by the Hebrew initial “Aleph.”
Aleph will apparently be unsupervised during his house arrest, after investigators forgot to demand the condition in their request for the terms of his release, drawing a rebuke from Judge Sharon Daniely.
Prosecutors attempted to correct their error mid-hearing, asking that Aleph be monitored during the month, but Daniely rejected their request, saying he doesn’t grant “makeovers.”
Aleph had been remanded into custody for a further day by the Lod District Court on Tuesday afternoon. His attorney said his client believed it was in the public’s interest to know the information he is accused of leaking, and that the leak did not endanger state security.
The investigation into the official, carried out by the Shin Bet and the DIPI, was unveiled earlier Tuesday after a judge overseeing the case partially lifted its gag order.
It allowed the media to disclose the alleged recipients of the leak, named as Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, Channel 12 journalist Amit Segal and Israel Hayom reporter Shirit Avitan Cohen.
Aleph is accused of having leaked to Chikli and Segal material related to a Shin Bet probe into possible “Kahanism” taking root in the police force under far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
Kahanism is the ideology espoused by extreme-right leader rabbi Meir Kahane, a former Knesset member who headed the banned ultranationalist group Kach before his assassination in New York in 1990.
Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party is seen as a successor to the proscribed racist Kach party founded by Kahane, though Ben Gvir has claimed to have moderated his views.
Segal first reported on the probe into extremism in the police force last month.
Unsourced Hebrew-language media reports said that during his questioning, the suspect said he acted to publicize information “of the highest importance to the public” that he alleged was being concealed by the Shin Bet.
The suspect’s defense team said in a (Hebrew) statement that the information passed to Avitan Cohen was not classified and included details regarding the Shin Bet’s probes of the devastating October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel that have not been made public.
Contrary to the Shin Bet’s published summary, which “pointed mainly to the political leadership on certain issues, [the information leaked by the suspect] presented a more complex picture regarding the Shin Bet’s conduct and position on the eve of October 7,” the suspect’s lawyers said.
The revelation of Aleph’s arrest increased already boiling tensions between the Netanyahu government and the security and judicial systems, with outraged ministers claiming the probe as evidence of a “deep state” working to oust the government.
Some coalition members claimed the investigation was further proof that Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar must not remain in his post, as the government moves to oust him.
Chikli, one of the leak recipients, called the official an “Israeli hero” on Tuesday for revealing “corruption” in the security service, alleging that he showed how Shin Bet chief Bar had carried out “obsessive spying on a serving minister” — apparently Ben Gvir.
He also called on State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman to provide legal defense to Aleph in a letter, arguing he should be recognized as a corruption whistleblower for airing information on the Shin Bet probe.
The Times of Israel Community.