THE TEL Aviv district court yesterday convicted former soldier Anat Kam of leaking some 2,000 classified military documents, but under a plea bargain the most serious charges of “harming state security” were dropped.
The plea bargain reduces the maximum prison term faced by Kam (24) when sentencing takes place in April, from life to 15 years.
She copied the documents, including 700 classified as top secret, during her military service at the army's central command headquarters between 2005-2007 and transferred them to Uri Blau, an investigative reporter for the Israeli daily Haaretz.
In 2008 Haaretzpublished an article based on data in some of the documents, with the approval of Israel's military censor, which implied that the army operated a shoot-to-kill policy when tracking down senior Palestinian militants.
According to Israeli media reports, the documents also included details of troop deployments and contingency plans for emergencies, and contained blueprints for Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
The defendant explained her motivation as a desire to expose Israeli “war crimes”. She said that she had leaked the documents to an Israeli and not a foreign reporter because the military censor in Israel would not permit publication of any potentially damaging information.
Speaking in court yesterday, Kam, who has been under house arrest since December 2009, said that she was not thinking about her punishment.
The sides failed to reach an agreement on sentencing. The defence is expected to ask for a suspended sentence or community service, while the state will likely demand a jail term of at least nine years.
Kam’s lawyer, Eitan Lehman, said that it had never been his client’s intention to harm Israeli security and the documents were only held by Kam and Blau.
“I hope the court will realise that not only was there no intention to harm the security of the state but no harm was done. Her motives were good.”
Prosecutor Hadas Forrer-Gafni said the state would seek a maximum term. “When a soldier takes the most confidential documents from the army, it is a very serious offence. Passing the information on to another party, even a journalist, with the knowledge that the material is not being safeguarded, is very grave indeed.”
Blau, who spent time in London after the story broke, returned to Israel after his lawyers reached a deal with the Israeli authorities to return the classified material.