“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,” Israeli army chief of staff Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi said on Wednesday, referring to the unidentified officer who was arrested last year and was charged in September.
He also described the Israeli agent as an “excellent officer” that eventually carried out serious offenses knowingly, saying, “He knew what he was doing, and I don’t know why he did it.”
On 16 May, the Israeli officer was found in serious condition in his prison cell. The Israeli military pronounced him dead a few hours later.
The Israeli army has imposed strict censorship on his death on the pretext of protecting the Israeli regime and the military’s privacy.
Kochavi said the officer should not have died in prison, adding that the military has to investigate his death while keeping the “secret” that he wanted to reveal.
“Everything we did was to maintain his privacy and the privacy of his family out of fair treatment,” he claimed.
However, the officer’s family members have criticized the Israeli army’s handling of the case and its secrecy.
“We don’t know anything. No one has explained to us what happened. All the [Israel army’s] conduct seems like an attempt to hide their own failures. How could they try to erase a person like this?” a family member told Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Officer’s family demands thorough investigation
The family member said that they had spoken to the officer hours before he died and that he did not sound like he was distressed in any way.
The lawyer for the officer’s family also said that “we respect the chief of staff, “ but the Israeli military 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,” said the lawyer, Benny Kuznitz.
Earlier, Kuznitz had said that the officer was aware of the offenses he committed, and “did it for his own and his unit’s professional gain.”
He “understood the potential damage that could be, but from conversations with him he did not think it would be like this,” he said. “The motive was personal, a matter of curiosity. Things that interested him, a desire to achieve and that’s how he explained it.”
Kuznitz added that the officer was in prison because of things attributed to him but he was not convicted in the end.
The Israeli military, however, said he was indicted on charges alleging serious security offenses at the end of the investigation, adding that “weight was given to the significant damage caused by the alleged offenses.”
While the results of the toxicology tests have not been announced, the Israeli agent’s family has rejected claims that he took his own life.