Anat Kamm released from prison after conviction for leaking IDF documents

By BEN HARTMAN

LAST UPDATED: 01/26/2014

Former IDF soldier won appeal for early release after serving two years; original 2011 sentence was for 4.5 years.

Anat Kamm Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Former IDF soldier Anat Kamm was released from prison on Sunday after she was sentenced in 2011 to 4.5 years in prison for leaking classified documents to Haaretz.

Related:

• Anat Kamm wins appeal for early release

Earlier this month, the Israel Prison Parole Board approved her early release after serving around half of her sentence and on Sunday she walked out of Neve Tirzah prison. Kamm said she "feels excellent" as she left the prison, climbing into a car as a right-wing activist called her a traitor. 

She later told Army Radio on Sunday that "my plan now is to catch up on sleep, because I didn't sleep much in the recent nights," she added that "in hindsight I would have done things differently."

On a Channel 10 morning show, her attorney Ilan Baumbach said that they will continue their legal process against Haartez and Uri Blau, for in his words, revealing Kamm as his source.

"She trusted a journalist who she passed important documents to, and that he would not reveal her as a source."

Kamm agreed to a plea bargain in 2011 and the more serious charge of espionage, which carries a life sentence, was dropped. Kamm instead plead guilty to gathering and storing more than 2,000 classified military documents during her military service.

The documents included files that were leaked to Haaretz journalist Uri Blau and used as the basis for two articles. The first, published in October 2008, used the documents to claim the IDF defied the High Court of Justice ruling against the targeted killings of Palestinian terrorists, while a second article pubished a few weeks later similarly intimated that the IDF had earmarked Palestinian terrorists for targeted killings, and included a photocopy of a targeted- killing order Kamm had given Blau.

During her sentencing, three judges accused Kamm of “cynically exploiting her position,” as the IDF’s OC Central Command secretary, to pass state secrets to Blau.

Before announcing Kamm’s sentence, the judges noted that after her discharge from the army in 2008, she attempted to give the stolen files to a Yediot Aharonot reporter.

When that failed, she gave Blau a disc containing 1,500 documents, 150 of them marked as “highly classified” and 330 as “classified.”

Kamm’s father, who served as a character witness before the sentencing, said his daughter had not intended to harm state security, but was merely “foolish, stupid, idiotic and vapid.”

However, when passing the sentence, the judges viewed her actions in a far harsher light.

“The claim that this was a mere act of stupidity is disingenuous and is an unconvincing attempt to explain to herself and others things that cannot be in any way justified,” Judge Nurit Ahituv said at the time.

“It is difficult to believe,” Ahituv said, “that the defendant, who has a high level of intelligence, did not understand the meaning, implications and danger of transferring huge amounts of data to a journalist for publication.”

Ahituv described the number of classified documents Kamm stole from the IDF as “almost unimaginable.”

“Those documents dealt with the most vital issues in the defense and the military,” said the judge, who noted that Kamm’s home computer, on which she had stored the documents, was not secure and that it had been connected to the Internet without encryption.

The judges added a sharp reminder that the classified information Kamm passed to Blau could since have been transferred to other, unknown actors.

“It is impossible to know whether the intelligence [Kamm] gave away has found its way into the hands of foreign agents, hostile or not,” Ahituv said.

In May 2012, Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein announced his decision to indict Blau.

The journalist was subsequently charged with “aggravated espionage,” punishable by seven years in prison.

Blau averted prison in a plea bargain two months later, under which he admitted charges of illegally possessing classified information. In return, prosecutors asked the court to hand down a four-month community service term.

In April, Kamm sued Haaretz and Blau for NIS 2.6 million for their alleged parts in causing her legal problems with the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency).

Joanna Paraszczuk contributed to this report.