State Prosecution Files Indictment Against Orich, Seeks to Bar Him from the Prime Minister’s Office

The State Prosecutor’s Office today (Thursday) submitted to the Tel Aviv District Court a notice amending the security indictment filed against Eli Feldstein and reserve soldier Ari Rosenfeld, over the theft of secret and sensitive information from IDF Intelligence systems and its publication in the German newspaper Bild. The amended indictment adds Yonatan Urich, the prime minister’s personal communications adviser, as a defendant, updates the facts section and the statutory charges accordingly, and adds prosecution witnesses. Urich is charged with conveying secret information with intent to harm state security, conveying secret information, possessing secret information, and destroying evidence. The filing was approved by the attorney general and the state prosecutor. In parallel, the prosecution is seeking restrictive conditions against Urich until the end of the proceedings, including a total ban on entering the Prime Minister’s Office and a ban on entering any security facility or any place where secret information may be held, as well as a ban on direct or indirect contact with anyone involved in the case, including witnesses and suspects. It should be noted that in practice, the prosecution is seeking to keep Urich away from Netanyahu shortly before the elections, and the meaning is that this would prevent him from leading the Likud campaign. The reason is that Netanyahu was added as a prosecution witness in the case, and Urich is prohibited from contacting those involved, as is customary in any criminal case. The prosecution said that, “The indictment was filed over the theft of especially sensitive secret information from IDF Intelligence systems, including raw intelligence, and its subsequent publication in a foreign media outlet, after the censors completely banned its publication in Israel, in order to influence public discourse on the handling of the hostage issue.”

According to the indictment, Urich and Feldstein used classified information at a high level of secrecy from the military system to influence the media discourse. As part of this, Feldstein and Urich worked to have one of the items published in the German newspaper Bild, knowing that it was secret information and despite being aware that the military censor had not allowed its publication in Israel, while taking a real risk of harming vital security interests. In addition, Feldstein, in advance coordination and with Urich’s approval, passed information he had received from Rosenfeld to additional unauthorized parties. The actions of Urich, Rosenfeld, and Feldstein led to the exposure of the existence of a secret intelligence means, its capabilities, and the ways it is used. The public disclosure of the secret information could cause real damage to the security interests of the State of Israel, mainly in the areas of intelligence collection and exposure of intelligence sources, through which lives are saved, since it reveals classified missions, capabilities, methods of operation, and means used by the intelligence community in various arenas. It was also alleged that the day after Feldstein and Rosenfeld were arrested, Urich replaced his mobile phone and deliberately refrained from transferring the correspondence that was on the previous phone, in order to prevent it from being presented as evidence.