Anat Kam appeals prison sentence
Former reporter serving 4.5 jail sentence for stealing secret IDF documents to petition Supreme Court to mitigate her punishment; says she should be treated as journalist Uri Blau has
"If this is all you did to Yitzhak Yaakov, Eli Zeira, and Uri Blau, why should I be in prison?" wonders Anat Kam.
Kam hopes that the conduct of the prosecution in her case, especially the sentence for Uri Blau – the journalist to whom she gave the documents she stole from an IDF base – will convince the Supreme Court to reduce her sentence.
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Since last November, Kam has been in prison for stealing thousands of secret documents from the IDF Central Command, where she served. But the former soldier recently appealed her sentence, Ynet has learned.
Kam arrives at prison (Photo: Yaron Brenner)
Working through her attorney, Ilan Bombach, Kam submitted a series of documents to the court, which has agreed to review them. A hearing is scheduled to be held in two weeks' time.
Regarding Blau, the petition included an official announcement from the Justice Ministry that it had decided to indict the journalist, as well as the indictment itself. Blau agreed to a plea bargain and is expected to be sentenced to four months community service.
While a statement from the attorney general included harsh comments on Blau, including that he intentionally kept hundreds or thousands of documents relating to IDF operations without any means of keeping them safe; violated the terms of his deal; failed to hand over all the material in his possession; and refused to return to Israel for questioning.
Bombach intends to use Blau's plea bargain to argue that the prosecution was discriminatory and applied selective enforcement in dealing with Kam and Blau, sentencing one to four months community service while the other was ordered to spend four and a half years in prison as well as another two years under house arrest.
Kam's appeal also contains a copy of a court decision from last week not to indict Eli Zeira for leaking the name of secret agent Ashraf Marwan. Her attorney claims that Zeira's crime was much more serious than his client's: "And the person who says so is none other than state prosecutor Moshe Lador," Bombach said, referencing an interview Lador gave to Haaretz.
Another section of Kam's appeal refers to the case of Col. (Res.) Yitzhak Yaakov, who was convicted in 2002 of revealing secret information some decades earlier and sentenced to two years' parole. The state sought prison time for Yaakov, saying he had "revealed secrets that could cause very serious damage," but eventually reached a deal with him.
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