Israel Prison Service Commissioner Kobi Yaakobi’s lawyers threatened Tuesday to petition the High Court of Justice if Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara indicts him before examining their claims of serious problems in the investigation.
Yaakobi, who heads Israel’s prison system, is suspected of passing confidential information about a secret investigation to a senior police officer.
That officer, former West Bank District central unit commander Avishai Muallem, was himself under investigation by the Justice Ministry’s Police Investigation Department (PID), which investigates suspected crimes by police officers.
According to reports, Baharav-Miara is expected to indict Yaakobi for breach of trust and obstruction-related offenses. Yaakobi has denied the allegations.
The case is tied to a broader investigation involving senior officials connected to National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Yaakobi is one of Ben-Gvir’s most senior appointments.
The lawyers ended the letter with a warning
At the center of the suspicion is the claim that Yaakobi told Muallem about a covert PID investigation into him while Muallem was seeking promotion in the police.
One of the key witnesses in the case is police spokesman Dep.-Ch. Lior Abudraham, who previously served as an aide to the police commissioner.
According to KAN, Abudraham told investigators that he had informed Yaakobi that Muallem could not be promoted because there was an open case against him. Yaakobi’s position, according to the report, is that he did not know there was a secret criminal investigation and understood only that Muallem’s promotion had been blocked over a separate internal matter.
But the latest dispute is not only about what Yaakobi allegedly told Muallem.
In recent days, Yaakobi’s lawyers have raised a separate claim: that one of the PID investigators involved in the case had an intimate or improper relationship with a central witness.
The witness and the investigator have both denied the allegation, according to reports.
In a letter sent Monday, the Attorney-General’s Office told Yaakobi’s lawyers that if they have evidence to support the claim, they must transfer it by Tuesday at 4 p.m.
The letter said the material would be examined before a final decision is made in Yaakobi’s case. It also stressed that the examination would not be carried out by PID or by Israel Police, but by another body.
Yaakobi’s lawyers, Ori Korb and Noy Katz, rejected that response in a sharply worded letter Tuesday.
They argued that they had already raised concerns about the investigation more than 40 days earlier, during Yaakobi’s hearing before a possible indictment.
According to the lawyers, those concerns included a possible conflict of interest in the investigation, alleged leaks from the case, and concerns that parts of the process may have been mishandled.
The lawyers said they had asked to present their information directly to Baharav-Miara or to an independent investigative official. Instead, they said, they were asked to hand over the material through channels connected to the same system they were complaining about.
Their argument is that PID, or anyone connected to PID, should not be involved in examining claims about alleged misconduct inside PID.
The defense also said it does not trust the way the case has been handled so far, pointing to what it described as repeated leaks to the media about the expected indictment and about the defense’s own claims.
Because of that, the lawyers said they would not hand over their material before knowing who would examine it and before being allowed to present it to an independent official.
They demanded either another hearing before the attorney-general or a meeting with an outside investigator appointed by her.
The lawyers ended the letter with a warning: If the attorney-general rejects their request and decides to file an indictment, they will ask for a three-day delay so they can petition the High Court of Justice.
The Attorney-General’s Office has rejected the claim that PID would be allowed to examine allegations against itself. Its letter said any evidence submitted by the defense would be reviewed by a body that is neither PID nor Israel Police.
The case has now become a fight on two fronts: whether Yaakobi unlawfully passed confidential information to Muallem, and whether his lawyers can force an independent review of the investigation before an indictment is filed.
