Police have confiscated the cell phones of advisers to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who are being investigated on suspicion of harassing Shlomo Filber, the state witness in Case 4000, during the Knesset elections.
The investigation by the Lahav 433 Unit of the Israel Police was launched in the wake of a video that circulated on the internet during the election campaign, and in which campaign activists allegedly located a vehicle near Filber's home and shouted at him using speakers.
As part of the investigation, two of the people closest to the Prime Minister were questioned by the police, one of whom is the Netanyahu family spokesman Ofer Golan, who headed the Likud campaign.
Golan's lawyer, Amit Haddad, said in response, "These are unfounded and baseless allegations and it would have been good had they not been investigated at all. While Mr. Golan is not allowed to comment on the issue so as not to disrupt an investigation, the investigation is illegally leaked [to the media].”
"We have no doubt that in the end, the case against Mr. Golan will be closed for the simple reason – he never bothered state witness Filber or any other witness," Attorney Haddad stressed.
Transportation Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that "the wholesale confiscation of the phones of the Prime Minister's advisers is a scary crossing of a bright red line in every respect on the part of the State Attorney's Office.”
"It's hard to escape the feeling that the cases against Netanyahu are crumbling and the prosecution is launching an unrestricted ‘fishing’ campaign to recruit state witnesses against him at all costs. And it is already approaching the level of the end of democracy," he added.
Filber signed a state witness agreement last February as part of an investigation into the "Bezeq-Walla" affair (Case 4000). The day before he signed, he was arrested and questioned by the police. The investigation apparently involved actions for which Filber decided to sign the agreement.
According to the agreement, Filber incriminated Netanyahu in exchange for a light sentence. Filber himself, who was one of the seven people arrested in connection with the case, was suspected of taking bribes, disrupting interrogation procedures, and accepting something fraudulently.