The Prosecutor's Office on Thursday filed an indictment against Yonatan Urich, an advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the Bild affair.
Simultaneously, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara requested that Urich be removed from the Prime Minister’s Office until the conclusion of the proceedings against him.
According to the indictment, Urich is accused of transmitting classified information with intent to harm state security, transmitting classified information, possessing classified information, and destroying evidence. The case has sparked broad public and political criticism, especially with the elections approaching.
Baharav-Miara petitioned the court to prevent Urich from contacting Prime Minister Netanyahu and to bar him from leading the Likud election campaign.
Netanyahu has also been added to the list of prosecution witnesses.
Last month, Baharav-Miara ordered that a serious indictment be filed against Urich in the "Bild" affair, and added as a defendant alongside Eli Feldstein and Ari Rosenfeld. In addition, a principled decision was made to indict Israel Einhorn as well; Einhorn is refusing to return to Israel.
Urich responded to the decision in a post on his X account, writing: "Interesting that the outgoing Attorney General spared me execution."
Urich’s attorneys, Amit Hadad and Noa Milstein, responded: "The prosecution’s decision to file an indictment against Yonatan Urich in the Bild case is mistaken and detached from the evidence, which contradicts the prosecution’s theory and demolishes the claims against Urich from the ground up."
"Honorable Judge, President Menachem Mizrahi, who is familiar with all the investigative 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 would have been proper, the Prosecutor's Office is clinging by force to a hollow and unnecessary case. As in the ‘witness harassment’ case - in which it 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 on behalf of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu," Urich’s attorneys concluded.