Anat Kamm begins 4.5-year prison sentence

Former IDF soldier convicted in February of stealing over 2,000 IDF documents, many of them classified; set to serve 4.5 years.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Anat Kamm arrives in prison 311 R (photo credit: REUTERS/Nir Elias)
Anat Kamm arrives in prison 311 R
(photo credit: REUTERS/Nir Elias)
Anat Kamm arrived on Wednesday morning at the Neveh Tirza Prison in Ramle to begin serving a four-and-a-half year sentence for leaking classified materials.
Kamm, now aged 24, was convicted in February in a plea bargain under which she pleaded guilty to stealing 2,085 IDF documents, more than 700 of which were classified, and passing many of them on to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau.
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The plea bargain dropped two far more severe charges of deliberately intending to harm state security, an offense that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Kamm was sentenced on October 30 by a panel consisting of Judges Nurit Ahituv, Miriam Diskin and Ra’anan Ben-Yosef. At the sentencing, the judges said that Kamm had “cynically exploited her position” during her army service as a clerk in the office of OC Central Command Maj.-Gen.
Yair Naveh in the capital’s Neveh Ya’acov neighborhood.
The judges said that in September 2008, after her discharge from the army, Kamm intended to give the files she had gathered to a Yediot Aharonot reporter, but when that fell through, she handed a disc containing 1,500 documents, 150 of them marked as highly classified and 330 as classified, to Blau.
Blau used the classified material as the basis for two articles for Haaretz. In the first, published in October 2008, Blau accused the IDF of defying a High Court of Justice ruling against the targeted killings of Palestinian terrorists.
The next article, published a few weeks later, similarly intimated that the army had earmarked Palestinian terrorists for targeted killings, and included a photocopy of a targeted-killing order Kamm had given to Blau.
On the 17th of this month, Kamm appealed her sentence.
She also asked for a postponement of the sentence during the entire appeals process, a request that was rejected by Supreme Court Justice Miriam Naor.
“It is impossible to know whether the intelligence [Kamm] gave away has found its way into the hands of foreign agents, hostile or not,” said Ahituv in explaining Kamm’s conviction. She added that the documents Kamm stole and gave to Blau contained information relating to army operations that could cause “enormous potential harm” if it fell into enemy hands.
Kamm described Naveh’s office as “embarrassing in terms of information security” and said she had not undergone any security check before being assigned to her army role, even though it gave her access to the most confidential documents.
The IDF declined to comment on Kamm’s sentence.
While Kamm’s trial is over (pending appeals), Attorney- General Yehuda Weinstein has yet to decide whether to prosecute Blau. Weinstein held a hearing for Blau in May on whether to try him for receiving and keeping classified military documents stolen by Kamm. The hearing was prompted after the Tel Aviv District Attorney’s Office announced that there was sufficient evidence to indict Blau for unauthorized possession of classified documents.
Following Kamm’s initial arrest, Blau remained in London for nearly a year before returning under an agreement with the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), in which he would return all classified documents in his possession.