Netanyahu’s office accuses security services of sensitive security leaks

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has slammed the security services following leaks of sensitive security documents.

“We are greatly pained that they are destroying the lives of young men with baseless claims in order to harm right-wing governance,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement yesterday, following the arrest of the premier’s spokesman, Eli Feldstein, over leaking top security documents to foreign media.

“In a democratic government people are not detained for 20 days in a basement because of a leak while being prevented from meeting a lawyer for days on end, just in order to extract from them false claims against the prime minister,” the statement added, in a direct accusation against the Shin Bet and the police who are investigating Feldstein and others.

“This abuse is even more outrageous because not a single investigation was conducted into the flood of criminal leaks from the cabinet and the negotiating team throughout the year of the war,” it said, referring to the heads of the Mossad and the Shin Bet.

The statement claimed the leaked documents “revealed sensitive security information to Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, and have caused great harm to Israel’s security and the effort to free the kidnapped soldiers.”

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Attorney Michael Bittman, who is representing a suspect in the Feldstein case, said his client had passed documents to Feldstein, who told his client that the prime minister wants additional information, adding at the time that he would “take a full day to deal with this matter”.

The lawyer added that he had asked the court to lift the gag order on the case so that its details would be revealed to the public, adding “we have nothing to hide” and that his client did not know Feldstein before he gave him the information.

The Rishon LeZion Magistrate’s Court yesterday extended the detention of the four suspects in the case until tomorrow.

The judge said during the hearing that if Feldstein’s investigation is not completed by tomorrow, he should be placed under house arrest.

Feldstein is being investigated for illegally obtaining top-secret documents and leaking them to foreign media after forging them in a way that serves the prime minister’s office’s policy of preventing the possibility of reaching a prisoner exchange agreement.

Rishon LeZion Magistrate’s Court Judge Menachem Mizrahi said the conduct could “cause serious harm to state security and a danger to sources of information.”

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