Israel’s Public Defender’s Office warned in its 2025 annual report of a worsening incarceration crisis and what it described as a continuing, far-reaching expansion of police and enforcement powers.
The report, which marks 30 years since the office’s establishment, also highlighted a High Court of Justice ruling barring consent-based searches of suspects’ phones without judicial orders, as well as developments in two murder cases handled by its retrials department.
The Public Defender’s Office represented 31,677 criminal cases in 2025, according to the report. The prosecution withdrew 1,273 indictments filed in magistrates’ courts in cases in which the office provided representation, accounting for approximately 8.7% of the office’s criminal cases concluded during the year.
In August 2025, the High Court accepted a petition filed by the Public Defender’s Office against a police practice, anchored in a prosecutorial directive, under which police sought to search suspects’ mobile phones without orders on the basis of their consent.
The court canceled both the practice and the directive that permitted it.
The Public Defender’s Office argued that a suspect’s consent could not substitute for the legally required order. It also argued that there were difficulties in recognizing informed consent in the relationship between an investigator and a suspect, and that an individual could not be expected to know the full scope of information stored on a phone.
The report said the court stressed that a judicial order was not a technical requirement but a substantive mechanism intended to ensure that an external authority examines the need for a search – and limits its scope – so that the invasion of privacy does not exceed what is necessary.
The case of Jamil Sarur
One of the report’s retrial cases concerned Jamil Sarur, whose second request for a retrial was granted in May 2025.
Sarur had served about 15 years in prison after being convicted of murder in a shooting connected to a clan dispute. According to the report, his conviction rested largely on testimony from members of a rival family, despite an agreement in which that family had accepted responsibility for the shooting.
The report said three new affidavits indicated that the factual basis underlying the conviction was incomplete and mistaken and that witnesses had coordinated their accounts to conceal the identity of the actual shooter and implicate Sarur.
Justice Dafna Barak-Erez found that the cumulative weight of the new evidence justified a retrial. Sarur was released from prison on May 15, 2025.
The report states that the matter did not end there. On January 11, the prosecution filed an indictment against Sarur on a manslaughter charge.
The second case ended in an acquittal.
On February 24, Deputy Supreme Court President Noam Sohlberg granted Sufian Maslouhi a retrial and ordered his acquittal of the murder of Menashe Atar, a jewelry dealer killed in a 1990 robbery in Ra’anana.
Maslouhi was convicted in 1994 on the basis of a confession.
The report said he was 18 when he was arrested and was held in severe detention conditions, including the use of an informant who committed sexual acts against him. It said he cooperated with police while in acute distress and after being promised benefits.
According to the report, Maslouhi’s statements led to charges in three murder cases against eight other defendants. All eight were ultimately acquitted, while Maslouhi remained the only defendant convicted.
The Supreme Court found that the court that convicted Maslouhi had not heard evidence in his case, while the court that examined the broader evidentiary picture found substantial doubt as to whether the events described in his confession had occurred.
Report describes severe prison crisis
Alongside the retrial cases, the report described a severe incarceration crisis.
It said the statutory capacity of Israel’s prison facilities was 14,500 people in 2025, while the prison population exceeded 23,200. Some 61% of incarcerated people were held in living spaces that did not comply with legal requirements, while approximately 4,400 were housed without beds.
The report described dozens of official public defender visits to detention facilities, which documented extreme overcrowding, poor hygiene and sanitation, pest problems, inadequate ventilation, and shortages of basic equipment.
The office called for immediate steps to reduce the number of people held in prison and detention. These included reducing the use of short prison sentences, increasing parole releases, expanding alternatives to incarceration, and using electronic monitoring and home detention.
In a separate chapter, the Public Defender’s Office said 2025 continued a trend of expanding police and enforcement powers.
It cited a legislative proposal to designate criminal organizations as terrorist organizations, which it said would introduce exceptional measures into ordinary criminal enforcement.
The proposal included restrictions on detainees’ meetings with lawyers, delayed presentation of detainees before judges, covert searches of computer material, including mobile phones, through spyware, and expanded seizure and forfeiture mechanisms.
The report warned that vague criminal-law definitions could undermine the principles of legality and legal certainty and raise concerns about over- and selective enforcement.
At the same time, it pointed to a government bill that would establish a right to counsel during police questioning for minors and people with intellectual or mental disabilities.
According to the report, the bill had been approved for second and third readings by the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee and was awaiting final approval in the plenum.
The report said there was no dispute over the need to address serious and organized crime.
It argued, however, that the protection of suspects’ and defendants’ rights also serves public interests, including the search for truth, procedural fairness, the prevention of errors and wrongful convictions, and public confidence in the justice system.
