The High Court of Justice on Wednesday denied a motion by Yonatan Urich, an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a chief suspect in the “Qatargate” investigations, to demand that the prosecution issue him a draft of an indictment, or a Notice of Suspicion, on the criminal charges of which he is suspected.
Urich’s team claimed that he was never served with a proper Notice of Suspicion, the document issued by law enforcement authorities to inform a suspect that they are under investigation for a specific offense.
Usually, this is provided at the outset of a criminal investigation. It serves to outline the suspected criminal activity, a procedural step that precedes more formal charges. It is not equivalent to an indictment.
The presiding justices, Yael Wilner, Ofer Grosskopf, and Alex Stein, ruled that there was no cause for the court’s involvement while the matter was under the jurisdiction of the prosecution. They added that in relation to criminal offenses – such as those attributed to Urich – there is no requirement to submit a Notice of Suspicion in the first place.
A hearing has been set for October 30.
On July 13, the prosecution handed over a notice to Urich’s team, detailing its intentions to change his status from “suspect” to “defendant.” The notice contained details of the suspected charges, along with the legal bases for them.
A Notice of Suspicion is a tentative document. Urich’s team requested that the prosecution provide more details on the charges themselves, arguing that it was lacking in essential factors that prevented the team from being able to formulate a proper response.
Time 'doesn't allow for necessary preparation'
The team also decried the timeline: It said that it had received the full interrogation materials only on September 16, leaving them with less than 20 work days to prepare for the hearing. “This kind of time doesn’t allow for the necessary preparation,” the team argued in the petition.
The prosecution has insisted that it has provided to the team whatever it was legally required, arguing that there was no legal basis to involve the High Court at this time, and that to do so would be against protocol. Urich’s team then appealed to the High Court.
The court pointed to legal tradition, which severely limits the intervention abilities of the HCJ in the discretion of the prosecution, barring exceptional cases. The judgment read: “We did not find a reason to do so in this one.”
The judges added, “There is no general obligation by the prosecution to give over this information, which is contained in a draft indictment – and before a hearing has taken place.”
In the “Qatargate” case, Urich is suspected of working for a pro-Qatar lobbying effort while simultaneously advising Netanyahu, allegedly to improve Qatar’s image during the Israel-Hamas War – as the Gulf state functioned as a negotiator in hostage and ceasefire talks.
Urich is suspected of passing on classified information with the intent to harm state security and obstruct evidence, as well as of contact with a foreign agent, breach of trust and security, fraud, money laundering, and corruption.
In particular, focus is on the [German right-wing tabloid] Bild case, in which Urich is accused of orchestrating and planning the illegal leaking of a classified document from the military by former PMO military spokesman Eli Feldstein – reflecting Hamas’s impressions of the successes of its efforts – to rattle the Israeli public.
Feldstein allegedly leaked classified military documents to Bild after permission for the publication of the documents was denied by the IDF censor. They were eventually published, allegedly to sway public opinion on the hostage negotiations. This was around August 2024, when six hostages were killed by their Hamas captors in a tunnel: Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Almog Sarusi, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Carmel Gat, and Alex Lobanov.
Urich and Feldstein were both arrested on March 31.