Between 2005 and 2007, Israeli soldier Anat Kamm worked in the office of Central Command chief Jair Naveh and copied roughly 2,000 pages of military documents, including material classified as “Top Secret.” She later provided the documents to Haaretz journalist Uri Blau. Blau used some of them in a November 2008 report concerning the alleged unlawful killing of three Palestinians by Israeli soldiers during a June 2007 operation in Jenin; the source states that Israel’s Military Censorship Board did not object to publication of the article.
Kamm was placed under house arrest in December 2009 and charged in January 2010 with espionage and violating state security. A news blackout initially restricted reporting on the case. The espionage charge was ultimately dropped, but on October 30, 2011, she was sentenced to four and a half years in prison plus eighteen months’ probation for collecting, possessing, and disclosing classified documents; her nearly two years of house arrest did not count toward the sentence. Israel’s Supreme Court reduced the prison term to three and a half years on December 31, 2012, and she was released early on January 26, 2014, after serving 26 months.
