After years of legal wrangling over digital privacy and police powers, two close aides to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have asked a court to throw out an indictment against them, arguing that the investigation was so tainted by unlawful phone searches and misleading representations to judges that it cannot fairly proceed.
In a motion filed on Wednesday in the Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court, Yonatan Urich and Ofer Golan – both senior strategists in Netanyahu’s circle – asked Judge Dror Kleitman to cancel the indictment against them in what is known as the “Filber harassment” case, citing abuse of process. They argued that law enforcement violated basic legal safeguards at the outset and later sought to retroactively legitimize those steps, undermining the integrity of the case.
The charges stem from an episode in August 2019, when a vehicle equipped with loudspeakers was sent near the home of Shlomo Filber, a former Communications Ministry director-general who later became a state witness in the sprawling Case 4000 corruption probe involving Netanyahu. Prosecutors say that messages broadcast over the speakers were intended to pressure Filber to retract or soften his testimony – a serious allegation given his central role in the case concerning alleged regulatory benefits granted to telecom tycoon Shaul Elovitch.
The defense, however, has shifted the focus from the loudspeaker incident to the legality of the investigation that followed.
In 2019, Urich and Golan – among others – were investigated and their phones seized and searched by the Lahav 433 National Crime Unit.
Urich later filed a complaint alleging unlawful conduct during those searches, claiming investigators accessed material unrelated to the case without properly explaining his right to refuse consent.
That complaint highlighted a broader question that has surfaced repeatedly in recent years about whether police exceed legal limits by accessing private mobile phones without prior judicial authorization.
In some instances, courts retroactively authorized parts of the searches; in others, judges questioned whether the resulting evidence could be used at all. A subsequent Supreme Court review upheld portions of the investigative steps but also clarified standards governing digital searches and judicial oversight.
By the time the indictment was filed in early 2025 against Urich, Golan, and co-defendant Israel Einhorn, the legality of the phone searches had become a central procedural battleground.
In its new motion, the defense argues that investigators not only acted without proper warrants in the early stages but also failed to present courts with the full factual picture when later seeking judicial approval. The defense alleges that lead investigator Rinat Saban provided incomplete or misleading accounts regarding when and how police first accessed certain devices – effectively seeking retroactive authorization for evidence already obtained.
That allegation, if substantiated, would go to the core of how courts balance police authority against constitutional protections for privacy and due process.
Case meets systemic unfairness threshold
Israeli courts rarely dismiss indictments outright on abuse-of-process grounds, reserving that step for cases involving serious and systemic unfairness. The defense contends that this case meets that threshold, arguing that the defects were not technical errors but part of a broader investigative pattern that undermines the fairness of the proceedings.
The motion does not concede the underlying allegations. Instead, Urich and Golan argue that, regardless of the facts of the August 2019 incident, the manner in which evidence was gathered now makes it impossible to conduct a fair trial.
The filing also lands amid continuing scrutiny of Netanyahu’s inner circle. Beyond the Filber harassment case, Urich has been linked in recent reporting to additional investigations involving senior political advisers, including the so-called “Qatargate” affair.
Filber himself was once considered a Netanyahu confidant before turning state witness in Case 4000. The harassment allegations emerged during one of the most politically volatile election periods in recent Israeli history, when leaked interrogation transcripts dominated public discourse in the run-up to the September 2019 vote.
Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.