Former IDF soldier Anat Kam was sentenced today by the Tel Aviv District Court to 4.5 years in prison and 18 months of probation. Kam was convicted, following her confession, of the serious crimes of espionage, including the gathering and passing on of classified information to "Haaretz" reporter Uri Blau.
In February, Kam was indicted in a plea bargain in which she confessed to these charges. Two charges of intention to harm state security were dropped. Kam had gathered information while she was serving as the office manager for former OC Central Command Yair Naveh. Just before the end of her army service, Kam gathered secret and sensitive material and copied it onto two CDs, for ideological reasons and in order to publish the information in the press.
The CDs contained 2,085 files, organized into 11 folders, in addition to another 625 documents, which were classified as "top secret," "secret," "classified," "restricted," and "personal." In 2008, after offering the documents to "Yediot Ahronot" journalist Yossi Yehoshua, Kam gave 1,500 documents to Blau.
The prosecution said that the documents included military operational plans, IDF discussion summaries, IDF situation assessments, deployment of forces, summaries of IDF investigations, and IDF targets. Kam has been under house arrest for more than a year. The affair was revealed in April 2010, when the court ordered a reduction in the media prohibition order. The police and the General Security Service (GSS) requested that Blau also be investigated, however he remained in London for a number of months, and refused to return to Israel, claiming that the GSS reneged on an agreement they had reached with him earlier. At a later time, Blau returned and was questioned under caution. Officially, the prosecution has not decided whether to prosecute Blau or not.
"The State of Israel does not lawfully allow people, including journalists, the right to hold confidential documents that according to law may be held by defense officials only," the Ministry of Justice stated following the affair.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 30, 2011
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