Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara on Thursday ordered the filing of a severe indictment against Yonatan Urich, a former advisor to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, over his alleged role in leaking classified documents to the German Bild newspaper.

The planned indictment accuses Urich of three offenses: transmitting classified information with the intent to harm state security, possession of classified information, and destruction of evidence.

The Attorney General essentially adopted the position of State Attorney Amit Isman in its entirety and determined that Urich should be prosecuted for all parts of the affair, alongside defendants Eli Feldstein and Ari Rosenfeld.

Urich’s lawyers, Attorneys Amit Hadad and Noa Milstein, responded by stating. “The prosecution’s decision to file an indictment against Yonatan Urich in the Bild case is mistaken and detached from the evidence, which negates the prosecution’s theory and completely shatters the claims against Urich.”

“Honorable President Judge Menachem Mizrachi, who is familiar with all the investigative materials in the case, determined there is not a shred of evidence linking Urich to the leak. Instead of closing a baseless case, as should have happened, the prosecution is stubbornly clinging to a flimsy and superfluous case. Just like in the ‘witness harassment’ case — where it became clear that no witness had been harassed — this case too will collapse. Yonatan Urich acted lawfully, and his only ‘sin’—his work for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.”

Urich himself reacted sardonically to the decision, writing on social media:  “I can’t believe that the outgoing attorney general spared me the death penalty.” A few minutes later, he wrote: “No choice, I’m going to Chof HaTzof”—a reference to the beach where disgraced Military Attorney General Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi staged her suicide attempt after the Sdei Teiman affair was exposed.

It should be noted that Baharav-Miara has apparently been too busy persecuting right-wing figures and Lomdei Torah to bother initiating criminal proceedings against Tomer-Yerushalmi for the most severe corruption case in Israeli history.

Education Minister Yoav Kisch responded to the indictment by stating: “Another indictment tailored against the right, this time against Urich. A politically dismissed attorney general who is destroying the rule of law and justice. Gali, be ashamed and go home.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said, “I don’t believe a single word coming out of Gali Baharav-Miara’s mouth. Yonatan Urich is a patriot and a professional, and the dismissed attorney general is conducting a witch hunt aimed at removing him from the Prime Minister’s Office at any cost. Everyone already knows this will end with nothing.”

Urich’s humorous response to the indictment came after a difficult period he went through during the investigation. As he shared in the past, in the first days of the investigation, he sat alone in a small and dirty cell in prison. “At three in the morning, they put me in a small cell in prison, under the open sky, after a strip search,” he wrote.

“I was alone like I had never been before. I didn’t think I would see my family again, certainly not the prime minister. Life seemed to end there,” Urich added in a post he published after meeting Netanyahu for the first time after a year of court-ordered bans from meeting with him.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)