The State Attorney’s Office filed a notice with the Tel Aviv District Court on Thursday, amending the security-related indictment previously filed against Eli Feldstein and reservist Ari Rosenfeld for publishing classified information in the German Bild newspaper.

The amended indictment adds Yonatan Urich, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s personal communications adviser, as a defendant. It also includes revisions to the factual allegations and legal charges, as well as the addition of prosecution witnesses.

Urich is charged with transferring classified information with the intent to harm state security, delivering classified information, possession of classified information, and destruction of evidence.

The filing of the indictment was approved by the Attorney General and the State Attorney.

At the same time, prosecutors are seeking restrictive conditions against Urich until the conclusion of the proceedings, including a complete ban on entering the Prime Minister’s Office and any security facility or location where classified information may be held, as well as a prohibition on direct or indirect contact with anyone involved in the case, including witnesses and suspects.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has been added to the prosecution’s witness list, meaning that under the requested restrictions, Urich would be prohibited from communicating with him and, as a result, would be unable to lead the Likud election campaign.

Channel 12 commentator Amit Segal slammed the prosecution’s request to bar Urich from the Prime Minister’s Office, stating: “Levin, Elkin, and Erdan were witnesses in Netanyahu’s cases. The same is true of employees in the Prime Minister’s Office and others in Likud. At no point was there a demand that Netanyahu be forbidden from speaking with them for years—only that they not discuss the content of their testimony.

“Public trust in Baharav-Miara and her team regarding political impartiality is not at its best after a series of failures in the High Court. When she effectively seeks to remove the key figure in the Likud campaign through a measure that is extraordinary even by extraordinary standards, it is puzzling (or perhaps not).

“Summoning Netanyahu as a witness is itself highly unusual, given the fact that he was barely questioned about the affair in his testimony.”

Following reports last month that Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara had approved the indictment, 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’ was working for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)