A senior official from the legal establishment said Thursday that the exposure of the case of Ben Zygier, or "Prisoner X," has caused grave damage to Israel's security, Channel 2 said.
The official said that the Supreme Court judges who approved the gag order on the case – or "senior jurists," as he referred to them – "wake up every morning and are deeply upset by the baseless blather on the matter."
The official said that, generally speaking, there are no prisoners in Israel whose identity is kept secret. "There are a handful prisoners in recent decades who were not held under their true names," he explained. The considerations for holding prisoners in solitary confinement, he said, are security considerations regarding the state and his family.
Zygier, who reportedly committed suicide in jail in 2010, was arrested when he was about to divulge sensitive information about Mossad operations, according to the Brisbane Times. The newspaper reported Thursday that Australian security officials suspect Zygier intended to pass on the information to the Australian government or the press.