Here’s what we know about the case.
As reported by The Jerusalem Post’s Anna Ahronheim, the officer, who served in a technological unit in the Intelligence Division, had been behind bars since September. During his time in jail, he was discharged from the army, yet remained in a military prison. He was found in serious condition in his cell at the newly opened Neve Tzedek military prison on the night of May 16 and was later pronounced dead.
According to the IDF, he “consciously carried out a number of acts that severely damaged state security” and had been “aware of the potential damage to national security as a result of his actions and even tried to hide them.”
“The officer cooperated in his interrogation and confessed to many of the acts attributed to him,” the IDF said, adding that the investigation found he had “acted independently for personal motives and not for ideological, nationalist or economic motives.”
At the end of the investigation, he was indicted on charges alleging serious security offenses, the military said.
That’s all we know some eight months after he was arrested. And according to Israeli media reports, the officer’s family does not know much more.
“The anger is at the attempt to make someone who died in military jail vanish,” one of his relatives told Haaretz. “We don’t know anything. No one has explained to us what happened. All the IDF’s conduct seems like an attempt to hide their own failures. How could they try to erase a person like this?”
In this day and age, it’s scary to think that the army has the ability to simply make a soldier “disappear.”
Only once he died – after eight months behind bars – did anything come to light about his existence, and even then, it’s been at a snail’s pace, despite information being reported overseas.
Even today, we know hardly anything about what happened, why he was jailed or the circumstances of his death. Just little bits of information that Israel’s security echelon deems fit to release.
That lack of information is bewildering. Since the IDF released the information that he wasn’t being held for espionage, why won’t the court or IDF release his name and what he did? If he committed a crime, the military must say what it was.
The confusion surrounding the officer’s death is also bewildering and raises even more questions. The IDF says it wasn’t suicide, and he wasn’t killed. Why is it taking so long to determine the cause of his death? And if he had been discharged by the army, why was he still being held in a military prison?
In a democracy, you can’t just make someone vanish and claim it’s for the good of the security of the country. You also can’t then hide behind the military censor and court gag orders to block both the public and the soldier’s family from knowing what happened. We know it wasn’t espionage or contact with an enemy country. So let us know what happened.
The representative of the Military Prosecutor’s Office, Lt.-Col. Matan Smolush, on Monday said: “There is no longer any fear of obstruction of justice, and therefore, there is no impediment to lifting the gag order.”
The family’s lawyer, Benny Kuznitz, said: “As someone who accompanied the officer from the day of his arrest until his tragic death, I got to know a young man with values, who in his eyes did everything in his power and talent to protect national security.”
It’s time for the facts to come out. The IDF must allow an independent investigation into the death of Officer X. Not only does the public have the right to find out what he was accused of, his family needs to know the whole story.
Imagine if he was your son with his death and final months shrouded in mystery.