Israel Police appealed a ruling permitting Netanyahu adviser Yonatan Urich, a key suspect within the “Qatargate” probe, to return to the PMO regardless of allegations of safety breaches.
Israel Police appealed to the Lod District Courtroom on Friday towards the Rishon Lezion Justice of the Peace’s Courtroom’s resolution to loosen the restrictive measures onYonatan Urich, a senior advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and one of many chief suspects within the “Qatargate” investigations.
The Thursday resolution by Decide Menahem Mizrahi permitted Urich to renew working on the Prime Minister’s Workplace. Throughout a listening to on the matter final month, police consultant Supt. Aviv Porat warned towards permitting such a transfer, as “this can be a man… underneath investigation and will legitimately be allowed to return to the identical place from which he carried out the alleged crimes.”
Within the “Qatargate” investigation, Urich is suspected of working for a pro-Qatar lobbying effort whereas concurrently advising Netanyahu, allegedly to enhance Qatar’s picture throughout the Israel-Hamas Conflict, because the Gulf state functioned as a negotiator in hostage and ceasefire talks.
He’s suspected of passing on categorised info with the intention of harming state safety and obstruction of proof, in addition to contact with a overseas agent, breach of belief and safety, fraud, cash laundering, and corruption.
Specifically focus is the “Leaked Paperwork Affair,” during which Urich is accused of orchestrating and planning, by the alleged execution of former PMO navy spokesman Eli Feldstein, the unlawful leaking of a categorised doc from the navy reflecting Hamas’s impressions of the successes of its efforts to rattle the Israeli public.
Eli Feldstein, one of many suspects within the so-called Qatargate investigation arrives for a court docket listening to on the Tel Aviv District Courtroom on July 15, 2025. (credit score: AVSHALOM SASSONI/FLASH90)
Feldstein allegedly leaked categorised navy paperwork to the German tabloid Bild after permission for his or her publication was denied by the IDF censor.
The paperwork had been finally revealed, allegedly to sway public opinion on the hostage negotiations. This was round August 2024, when six hostages had been killed by their Hamas captors in a tunnel: Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Almog Sarusi, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Carmel Gat, and Alex Lobanov.
Ruling in Urich’s favor
This isn’t the primary time the Justice of the Peace’s Courtroom dominated in favor of Urich; the police appealed to the District Courtroom, and it was overturned; this is able to be the fourth. A listening to earlier than Lod District Courtroom Decide Amit Michles has been set for Wednesday afternoon.
Israel Police wrote within the attraction that the Justice of the Peace’s Courtroom “repeatedly makes the basic mistake in terms of our requests [regarding Urich]. It ignores the load of the allegations, the wrong comparability to different suspects within the case, and its worldwide results, ramifications, and problems.”
It additional defined that the explanation to maintain Urich away from the PMO – and to ban him from contacting anybody related to the Workplace or the corporate Notion, additionally on the coronary heart of the investigations – is as a result of the investigation has not but concluded, and this might impede it.
Urich and Feldstein had been each arrested on March 31.
