Ex-soldier jailed for passing IDF documents to reporter goes free
Anat Kamm, convicted of giving classified information to Haaretz journalist, has sentence cut short for good behavior. 'I feel great', she said while stepping out of prison
"I feel great," Kamm said while stepping out of prison.
Upon arriving at her parents' home in Jerusalem she said: "My plans are to catch up on some sleep because I haven't slept well in the past few days. In retrospect, I would have done things differently
Kamm – who delivered classified documents to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau – was sentenced to four and a half years in prison and began serving her time in November 2011. In December 2012, two Supreme Court justices partially accepted her appeal.
A right-wing activist outside the prison called Kamm a traitor, but Kamm refused to comment.
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In February 2011, the Tel Aviv District Court convicted Kamm of two charges - passing on classified army information, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years, and possessing classified information, which can result in a seven-year term. Kamm was initially charged with compromising state security, but the charge was dropped as part of her plea bargain.
She was initially sentenced to four and a half years in prison and 18 months of probation. The Supreme Court then reduced Kamm's prison sentence by one year after she appealed against the severity of her punishment.
Kamm, arrested in 2009, was indicted for handing Haaretz journalist Uri Blau some or all of more than 2,000 classified army documents she had stolen while serving in the office of former Central Command chief Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh. She scanned the documents and transferred them to her computer at home.
Blau used the information he received from Kamm to publish an article, among others, that described the IDF's assassination of wanted Palestinians, seemingly against a High Court of Justice directive. The articles, including the documents, were approved for publication by the IDF censor.
During her Shin Bet interrogation, Kamm had claimed that she was driven by ideology; she then completely changed her version in court, calling it a "stupid idea."
