ISRAEL: Former soldier pleads guilty to leaking classified military documents to newspaper

Record ID: 397080

  • Title: ISRAEL: Former soldier pleads guilty to leaking classified military documents to newspaper
  • Date: 7th February 2011
  • Summary: TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (FEBRUARY 06, 2011) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF TEL AVIV DISTRICT COURT MAN WALKING INTO COURT (*** FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY ***) MAN TALKING TO ANAT KAMM, EX-SOLDIER WHO PLEADED GUILTY TO LEAKING MILITARY DOCUMENTS TO AN ISRAELI JOURNALIST (SOUNDBITE) (Hebrew) EX-SOLDIER WHO PLEADED GUILTY TO LEAKING MILITARY DOCUMENTS, ANAT KAMM, SAYING: "I admitted to the charg
  • Embargoed: 22nd February 2011 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel, Israel
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVAE7Z1XF64RHXWQ0XJS79V460IY
  • Story Text: A former Israeli soldier pleaded guilty on Sunday (February 6) to leaking classified military documents to an Israeli newspaper.
    Tel Aviv district court accepted a plea bargain with Anat Kamm, 24, scrapping some of the original charges including harming state security, but convicted her of possessing and distributing secret information.
    "I admitted to the charges against me, and I have nothing else to add," Kamm told reporters after the court session.
    Kamm had taken some 2,000 military papers during her mandatory army service and passed classified information on to a correspondent for Israel's Haaretz daily.
    The newspaper subsequently reported in 2008 that top army officers authorized assassination of Palestinian militants in possible violation of Israeli law.
    Eitan Leman, Kamm's lawyer said that the documents Kamm leaked to the Israeli journalist did not harm Israeli security.
    "After fourteen months of house arrest, we have reached an agreement with the district attorney's office that all the offences that... applied that Anat Kamm had any intention of harming Israeli security were erased from the indictment, the indictment now only states that Anat held and gave documents to an Israeli journalist who worked with the Israeli censorship and never gave any publication to anything which could have had any harm to Israeli security," Leman said.
    The offences Kamm plead guilty to carry a maximum penalty of 15 years under Israeli law.
    State prosecution attorney, Hadas Furer-Gafni, said that Kamm's offences are very serious and will constitute many years in jail.
    "She took more than 2,000 papers out of the army and gave most of them to another person, which is Uri Blau from Haaretz (newspaper). These are very serious offences and we are going to demand a very serious punishment which means many years in jail," she told Reuters Television.
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