Former Israeli army attorney general Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi was arrested as part of an investigation into the leak of a video showing violence in 2024 against Palestinian detainees by Israeli soldiers in a high-security prison, the Minister of Internal Security said on Monday, November 3.
After announcing his resignation on Friday, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi briefly disappeared on Sunday, sparking speculation in the press about a possible suicide attempt.
An open investigation
In a message on Telegram, the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, announced on Monday that “it was agreed that, in light of last night’s events, the Penitentiary Service will act with greater vigilance to guarantee the safety of the detainee in the detention center where she is in police custody.”
According to a copy of the resignation letter published by the media on Friday, Yifat Tomer-Yeroushalmi acknowledges that his services released the video to the media. “The IDF (the Israeli army, editor’s note) is a moral army that respects the law and therefore, even during a painful war (…), it must investigate illegal acts,” the prosecutor said in this letter.
On Friday, the military announced the opening of an investigation into the leak of the video. Defense Minister Israel Katz welcomed the resignation of the attorney general. “Anyone who defames IDF soldiers has no place in the army,” he said, according to a statement from his office.
Five soldiers charged in February
The announcement of the arrest and then the indictment in February of five soldiers provoked protests in the army and part of the Israeli political class, while Israel was in the middle of war against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza.
The five soldiers were accused of mistreatment of a Palestinian detainee in July 2024 at the Sde Teiman detention center in southern Israel. According to the indictment, the soldiers “acted against the detainee with great violence” and inflicted “serious injuries,” including broken ribs and a punctured lung, the army revealed in February.
The Sdé Teiman center was set up on a military base to imprison Palestinian detainees, especially in the Gaza Strip, after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, triggered on October 7, 2023 by the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israeli soil.
Organizations defending the rights of Palestinian prisoners periodically accuse the Israeli prison administration of mistreating Palestinian prisoners.
Source: BFM TV
