Netanyahu
NetanyahuYonatan Sindel/Flash 90

A Likud official responded on Sunday evening to reports in the media that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu would be questioned in the submarine affair after two of his associates were questioned on Sunday for 15 hours at the offices of the Israel Police's Lahav 433 unit.

"Despite the attempts to create a lynching atmosphere of a media trial whose results have been decided in advance - the Attorney General and the State Attorney's Office are again making it clear even now that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not suspected in any way in the submarine affair. It was true, it's true now - and it will always be true," the official said.

The official noted that the media's attempt to cast doubt on the prime minister because any of his associates have been interrogated is futile. "Only recently, a year after the police announced the filing of recommendations for an indictment against the PM's former chief of staff Gil Shefer, the State Prosecutor's Office announced that the case against him had been closed. Who says things won't be different this time?"

"What value is there to the legal process when it is conducted entirely in the pages of newspapers and in the TV studios, through illegal and tendentious leaks?" the Likud official added.

Earlier on Sunday, Attorney David Shimron, who served as Netanyahu's personal attorney, and a former senior official who is also close to the prime minister and whose name was not cleared for publication, were detained for questioning.

The two were detained by investigators of the police's Lahav 433 unit in the context of investigations of Case 3000 (also known as the "submarine affair").

Attorney Shimron has been questioned in the past on suspicion of involvement in the affair, after he represented one of the main suspects in the affair, who became a state witness, Miki Ganor.