The District Court hearing in the cases against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Wednesday revealed more shocking police improprieties and illegal actions confirmed in testimony by a police investigator.
It was revealed during the hearing that Israel Police and the prosecution obtained wiretapping warrants in Case 1000 by misleading the court to believe that investigators were examining particularly serious suspicions—bribery and money laundering—even though these suspicions were not part of the case and had never been authorized for investigation by then-Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit.
Former police officer Michal Elam—who served in the Intelligence Assessment Division of Lahav 433 and investigated Cases 1000 and 2000—revealed a series of investigative actions carried out without being reported in real time to the Attorney General and without being disclosed to the defense.
She testified in court that numerous individuals connected to the prime minister were illegally wiretapped. She described the scope of the warrants as exceptionally broad and acknowledged that they were not transferred to the defense and were not disclosed to the court. She also admitted that she searched the mobile phone of Netanyahu’s aide, Perach Lerner, without a valid search warrant, during which she looked, among other things, for correspondence involving senior politicians—including Ayelet Shaked and Yuli Edelstein—without authorization.
During cross-examination, she was asked who else was wiretapped besides Natan Eshel, and she claimed that she doesn’t remember but confirmed that it was “dozens of people.”