WASHINGTON (JTA) – The former IDF soldier currently indicted for espionage told an Israeli court that she took classified documents to expose war crimes, Ha’aretz reported.
Anat Kamm, an Israeli journalist and former soldier, allegedly passed off classified documents she had access to during her military service in the office of the GOC Central Command, to Ha’aretz reporter Uri Blau.
According to police documents obtained by Ha’aretz, Kamm told police that the Israel Defense Forces committed war crimes and that she appropriated the documents to expose them.
“I didn’t have the chance to change some of the things that I found it important to change during my military service, and I thought that by exposing these [materials] I would make a change,” Kamm is quoted as saying in the police documents. “It was important for me to bring the IDF’s policy to public knowledge.”
Separately, Kamm’s attorney, Avigdor Feldman, staid she is ready to relinquish her journalistic immunity as Blau’s source and is calling on him to return to Israel from London with all of the documents she provided him.
“I think that he did not reveal the documents because he wants to protect her," Feldman said. "Now she gave up her immunity as a source, and I am asking that he return, and his return, as far as I understand, will minimize the affair.”
Kamm may be prosecuted on the most serious espionage charge: passing on classified information with intent of harming state security. A guilty conviction carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. She also faces a lesser charge of gathering and possessing classified materials with intent to harm state security, which carries a 15-year maximum sentence.
