High Court freezes legal proceedings against former IDF legal chief Tomer-Yerushalmi

The Supreme Court temporarily froze the legal proceedings against the former Military Advocate General Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, regarding her role in leaking a video alleging abuse of Palestinian prisoners at Sde Teman prison, after Likud MK Avichai Boaron and the right-wing Lavi organization requested an additional hearing on the matter.

This new ruling follows a ruling from three weeks ago in which the court said that there were no grounds for judicial intervention in the investigation into the affair and also ruled that there was no basis to intervene in the decision allowing the state attorney to decide on the charges in the case against Tomer-Yerushalmi.

The court further ruled that there was no reason to grant Justice Minister Yariv Levin additional time to appoint an oversight official for the investigation, which had recently concluded. The ruling cleared the way for the prosecution, led by State Attorney Amit Isman, to advance toward a decision in the case.

However, on Thursday, MK Boaron and Lavi submitted a request for an additional Supreme Court hearing, asking the court to reconsider its decision not to intervene.

The request for an additional hearing is based, among other arguments, on the minority opinion in the original petition, in which Supreme Court Justice David Mintz argued that the petition should have been partially accepted.

Judicial opinion: Initial investigation required oversight

Mintz argued that the clear underlying premise of the previous ruling was that the investigation required the appointment of an oversight and accompanying official due to the extraordinary sensitivity of the affair. The case involves allegations that the head of the IDF’s law enforcement system was involved in leaking investigative materials and providing false information to the court.

Mintz argued that as long as the investigation had not been conducted under proper oversight, it could not be said that the basis for determining the state attorney’s inability to handle the case had changed, and therefore the time had not yet come to reconsider the issue.

He also argued that the fact that police had exhausted, in their view, their investigative actions did not justify continuing the proceedings without examining whether the process was valid, even retroactively.

Justice Mintz emphasized that he was not ignoring the fact that his conclusion could open the door to prolonging the investigation process. However, he argued that the solution was not to disregard the previous ruling, but rather to issue an order requiring the minister to exercise his authority.

The petition stated: "This request extends far beyond the boundaries of the affair: In the Boaron case, it was determined that oversight of a sensitive criminal investigation such as this one is mandatory, and from this derived the recognition of the minister’s authority, the limitations on its exercise and the operative instruction that was issued with the agreement of the entire panel; the ruling that is the subject of this request determined that oversight is only an 'option.'"

"The two legal principles cannot coexist side by side; at the very least, the ruling raises fundamental and important questions that the honorable court itself has already found worthy of being examined by an expanded panel."

Grounds for an expanded panel of judges

The High Court must now decide whether to hold another hearing before an expanded panel of judges or determine that there are no grounds for one. Until that decision is made, Justice Dafna Barak-Erez temporarily froze the handling of the investigation file.

In a brief decision issued Friday, Barak-Erez wrote: "The request for a further hearing was transferred to my handling yesterday, Thursday evening. For the sake of caution and without taking a position at this stage, I order a stay of execution of the ruling that is the subject of the request, by freezing the current situation regarding the handling of the investigation file by the state attorney, until another decision is issued."

Until the High Court issues another ruling, proceedings in the military prosecutor affair remain frozen. No decision will be made on whether to file indictments in the case until then.