Serious indictment against Yonatan Urich in the "Bild affair" | Avishai Grintzvaig
Prime Minister Netanyahu's advisor will be charged with two counts of disclosing classified information with the intention of harming state security, as well as destruction of evidence
A serious indictment against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's advisor, Yonatan Urich, will be filed today (Thursday) in the "Bild Affair" for two offenses of conveying secret information with intent to harm state security, as well as destruction of evidence. This was first reported this morning by i24NEWS' legal affairs commentator, Avishai Grintzig.
The legal representatives of Yonatan Urich, attorneys Amit Hadad and Noa Milstein say, "The prosecution's decision to file an indictment against Yonatan Urich in the Bild case is a mistaken decision that is disconnected from the evidentiary material, which refutes the prosecution's thesis and utterly destroys the claims against Urich at their core."
They further added that "Honorable President Judge Menachem Mizrahi, who is familiar with all the investigation materials in the case, determined that there is not a shred of evidence that Urich was involved in the leak. Instead of closing a baseless case, as should have been done, the prosecution is clinging forcefully to a leaky and unnecessary case. Just like in the 'witness harassment' case, which turned out that the witness was not harassed, this case too will be closed. Yonatan Urich acted lawfully, and his only 'sin' is his work for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu."
The classified documents affair was exposed at the end of 2024, in which suspicion arose that several associates of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received documents and classified materials without authorization, and leaked them to the German "Bild" in September 2024.
The document in question, which was falsely presented as a Hamas strategy, was obtained illegally from intelligence departments and passed through a chain of people, while the military censor rejected its publication in Israel. At the center of the affair, as mentioned, are Urich, Eli Feldstein, who was Netanyahu's spokesperson, Israel Einhorn, the owner of the consulting firm "Perception," and Ari Rosenfeld, an IDF reservist NCO who supplied the classified documents.