The intelligence officer who died in prison last month “was an excellent officer” who, though he knowingly carried out severe offenses, should not have died in prison, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi said on Wednesday.
“He was one of my soldiers, one of our officers,” said Kohavi, speaking at an event in memory of former IDF chief Amnon Lipkin-Shahak at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. “Even if he carried out serious offenses – and he did. He knew what he was doing, and I don’t know why he did it. He was a great officer.”
Denying that his story was similar to that of Ben Zygier, known as prisoner X, the officer was in touch with family and friends while imprisoned and was held under his name.
But “he should not have died in prison, and we have to investigate why,” Kohavi said, adding that the military can investigate his death while keeping the “secret” that the officer almost gave up.
“Everything we did was to maintain his privacy and the privacy of his family out of fair treatment,” said Kohavi. “We wanted to take care of him. We wanted to take care of his family. And at the same time, keep a big secret that he almost destroyed but at the last minute we stopped.”
Benny Kuznitz, the lawyer for the officer’s family, said in response that “we respect the chief of staff, but the IDF failed in its core duty – to preserve human life in a guarded and supervised military facility. The family demands a thorough, comprehensive and transparent investigation.”
The officer was arrested in September and died in military prison last month. He was behind bars for knowingly committing offenses that caused “severe damage to national security,” the IDF said.
The investigation into the officer, who served in a technological unit in the Intelligence Division, found that he had “consciously carried out a number of acts that severely damaged state security,” and that he had been “aware of the potential damage to national security as a result of his actions and even tried to hide them.”
The military said that the officer, whose identity remains under gag order, cooperated in his interrogation and confessed to many of the acts attributed to him,” and that the investigation found that he had “acted independently, for personal motives, and not for ideological, nationalist or economic motives.”
At the end of the investigation, he was indicted on charges alleging serious security offenses, the military said, adding that “weight was given to the significant damage caused by the alleged offenses.”
He was given an autopsy with a doctor representing the family present. The results of the toxicology tests have yet to be received, and the official cause of death has not yet been given.
The family has rejected claims that he took his own life.
He was buried in a civilian cemetery, and will not be considered a fallen soldier since he was released at his own request from the IDF while in prison.