Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara and chief prosecutor Amit Aisman have decided to indict Netanyahu adviser Yonatan Urich over his alleged role in the classified-documents leak to the German newspaper Bild, after rejecting his arguments at a pre-indictment hearing, prosecutors told his attorneys Thursday.
The indictment, which prosecutors said would be filed shortly in the Tel Aviv District Court, will charge Urich with delivering secret information with the intent to harm state security, possessing secret information, and destroying evidence.
The decision moves one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest advisers into the center of one of the most sensitive criminal cases to emerge from the war, a case that has already raised questions about the handling of classified intelligence inside Netanyahu’s wartime communications circle.
In a letter to Urich’s attorneys, Amit Hadad and Noa Milstein, the Central District Attorney’s Office said the decision followed a hearing held on November 2, written arguments submitted on November 6, and a supplementary hearing held after Aisman took office as state attorney.
According to the notice, Urich will be charged with delivering secret information with the intent to harm state security, delivering secret information, possession of secret information, and destruction of evidence.
The case centers on the alleged leak of a classified IDF intelligence document that was later published by Bild in September 2024, days after six hostages were found murdered in a Hamas tunnel in Gaza and as mass protests erupted in Israel demanding that the government reach a deal for the remaining captives.
‘Yonatan Urich acted lawfully; his only sin was working for Netanyahu’
The publication came as Netanyahu was under intense pressure over his insistence on maintaining Israeli control of the Philadelphi Corridor and his argument that continued military pressure – rather than concessions to Hamas – was needed to force Hamas to compromise.
The document was widely seen as bolstering Netanyahu’s position by presenting Hamas, rather than the Israeli government, as the main obstacle to a deal.
Urich, a longtime Netanyahu adviser, has been suspected of involvement in the alleged political and media chain through which the classified material moved from the security establishment toward publication abroad.
Prosecutors have treated the affair not only as an unauthorized leak, but as an alleged attempt to use sensitive military intelligence to shape Israeli public opinion at a critical moment in the war.
Urich denies wrongdoing.
Urich’s lawyers issued a sharp response Thursday, calling the decision to file an indictment “wrong and detached from the evidence,” which they said “undermines the prosecution’s theory and dismantles the allegations against Urich from the ground up.”
Hadad and Milstein said Lod District Court President Menachem Mizrahi, who they said is familiar with all the investigative material in the case, had determined that there was “not a shred of evidence” that Urich was involved in the leak.
“Instead of closing a baseless case, as it should have done, the prosecution is clinging by force to a hollow and unnecessary case,” they said.
“Yonatan Urich acted lawfully; his only sin was working for Netanyahu,” they added.
