A commander in an IDF combat unit was arrested and suspended from his position for a week on Wednesday by Military Police on suspicion of photographing naked soldiers and commanders, including in showers and other places. He was summoned to a hearing and will be served with an indictment, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said.
The Spokesperson Unit added that an investigation was conducted into the affair, the results of which were transferred to the military prosecutor.
In recent weeks, soldiers and commanders have been summoned to the Military Police Investigations Unit to identify themselves in videos taken secretly by the suspect. The military police suspect that the commander managed to delete some of the videos and made an effort to recover them.
According to KAN, he would enter the showers at the divisional training base and makeshift showers in training areas, hiding his phone from view in various ways, sometimes in a towel.
After he finished showering, he had conversations with other soldiers and in the process filmed them. In other cases, he left his cell phone in video-filming mode in a towel he hid in the shower, returning later to retrieve it.
"I saw the videos and I was in shock, it's scary to think that he was a training commander. You see him in the videos hiding his phone in a towel," one of the soldiers told KAN News.
"He would take a shower, go out and come back holding the phone to his chest. Or he would come to the showers, finish brushing his teeth and stand as if he was talking to us while filming us. This is traumatizing for life," the soldier explained.
"He would take a shower, go out and come back holding the phone to his chest. Or he would come to the showers, finish brushing his teeth and stand as if he was talking to us while filming us. This is traumatizing for life."
IDF soldier
The alleged victims are accompanied by the military prosecutor throughout the affair. The IDF added that it strongly condemns the suspect's acts.
How were the IDF commander's crimes exposed?
One of the other commanders suspected him when they were in a training area and found his phone in the shower. After he realized that he was being filmed, he confronted the commander on the spot.
The commander then turned to his superiors and an MP investigation was opened, during which the suspect's cell phone and his laptop were confiscated and he was taken into custody. The soldiers who were photographed were summoned to testify in the investigation.
"I sent a healthy son to the army to be a fighter. A month and a half ago he came home and was very distraught. A few days later, his sister told me everything that happened - they photographed him and his friends in the shower," the father of one of the soldiers said in an interview with KAN Reshet Bet.
"I don't know how to process this, the boy is in post-trauma," he said. "I'm not ready to accept something like this. He is broken to pieces – he's not ready to talk about it, he's not ready to go to the army, he can't trust people anymore."