Jonathan Urich, a spokesman in the Prime Minister’s Office, was questioned by the Israel Police’s Lahav 433 major crimes unit for a second time on Wednesday as part of a probe into the alleged leak of stolen classified documents to the German Bild daily, Hebrew media reported on Wednesday.
Urich’s phone was confiscated and he was first questioned under caution late last week. Ynet reported that the second round of questioning, which came before indictments were set to be issued against the main suspects in the case on Thursday, resulted from evidence found on his phone.
Urich was reportedly questioned on suspicion of having instructed former Netanyahu aide and spokesman Eli Feldstein, the main suspect in the case, to send the stolen documents to Srulik Einhorn — a former senior campaign adviser to Netanyahu’s Likud party — who in turn passed it on to Bild.
According to Channel 12, Urich’s demand came after a Channel 12 reporter whom Feldstein initially leaked the document to was barred from reporting on it by the IDF censor.
Urich has been involved in several controversies in the past, including allegedly harassing a state witness in Netanyahu’s corruption trial.
The leak case is one of several security-related probes into the Prime Minister’s Office, and is focused on Feldstein, who is suspected of working with intelligence soldiers to steal classified material from the IDF. Feldstein is suspected of leaking material from one document to Bild, whose publication is said to have harmed efforts to free Israeli hostages in Gaza and exposed Israeli intelligence sources.
Investigators believe the leaking of the document had the potential to do severe damage to Israel’s security, the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court disclosed on Sunday, while the IDF came to the conclusion that the leak harmed the war aim of freeing the hostages
According to the court, the apparent motivation behind the leak was to alleviate public pressure and criticism against Netanyahu following Hamas’s murder of six high-profile hostages days before the IDF found them in late August.
Netanyahu himself has not been named as a suspect in the case.
Feldstein allegedly initially tried to get the document published in the Israeli press after the murder of the hostages and leaked it to several Israeli journalists. But when the military censor blocked the publication of their reports due to the sensitivity of the material and its source, Feldstein allegedly sought to get it published in the foreign press, which the censor could not block.
Feldstein has remained under arrest for weeks, along with one of the soldiers who allegedly leaked the document to him. Einhorn, who is currently abroad, is reportedly delaying his return to Israel so as not to be arrested upon his return. As of Wednesday evening, Urich had not been placed under arrest.