The former IDF soldier currently indicted for espionage told an Israeli court that she took classified documents to expose war crimes, Haaretz reported.
Anat Kam, an Israeli journalist and former soldier, passed off classified documents she had access to during her military service in the office of the GOC Central Command, to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau.
The documents, she claims, reveal that the Israel Defense Forces committed war crimes in the West Bank by assassinating Palestinian militants, allegedly violating Israeli Supreme Court rulings.
Kam stated that she will 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. 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,” said Kam’s attorney Avigdor Feldman.
Kam will 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.
“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,” said Kam as a means of justifying her actions. “It was important for me to bring the IDF’s policy to public knowledge.”
