The Police Investigations Department will request during a court hearing to release an ISA agent to a month-long house arrest, which will include various restrictions and a prohibition on meeting with other parties involved in the affair.
The ISA employee was arrested on suspicion of leaking information to the media. The investigation was opened in recent weeks following reports that ISA head Ronen Bar ordered an investigation into what has been termed "the takeover of the police by the Kahane movement."
His attorney referred during the hearing on extending the arrest to the allegations against the senior official: "In the (leaked) information, there is no danger to the security of the information and the public; it was published with the approval of the censor. The ISA has a lot of classified information, but it must be careful not to hold on to information that is not classified just because it can."
In an interview with Kan this morning, the attorney said that the ISA "Opened an investigation against politicians, which found nothing. Ronen Bar then ordered, 'Keep looking, see what can be found, and bring me everything'. The agent saw that the ISA's inquiry did not match its charter, that the assignment presented the inquiry in a distorted manner, and the inquiry was hostile to politicians in certain matters. The full inquiry shows that the ISA did the same things and supported them. These are things he disclosed due to the public's right to know."
"From the first moment, he said that he leaked documents of positions and actions, not information from intelligence documents. The censor approved them. They are of great public interest. I am not aware of cases where individuals were arrested for leaks that are not of a security nature," he noted.
"The ISA and the heads of the system are involved in this investigation and are experiencing an acute conflict of interest that they have not succeeded in overcoming. The agent was forbidden even to speak with a lawyer, which surprised the judge."
According to the investigation, the information was leaked to journalists Amit Segal and Shirit Cohen-Avitan and Minister Amichai Chikli. The investigation indicates that the journalists and the minister are not suspected of any involvement in the affair.
The Attorney General assigned the investigation to the Police Investigations Department, and it has been ongoing for nine days. The ISA employee was arrested and classified as a security detainee due to the severity of the suspicion of the offense of transferring classified information. As a result, he was denied the right to meet with an attorney for eight days.
Last week, the investigators requested the court to extend his detention by 16 days, but the request was only partially accepted, and the detention was extended by eight days. Today another hearing is being held, in which investigators will request to transfer him to house arrest under restrictions.
