Shlomo Filber, the state witness in the case against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Sunday filed a lawsuit against senior officials in the law enforcement system. In the lawsuit, he claimed he endured "abuse and humiliation" during the investigation. The following details might prove disturbing.
Filber alleges that he was sexually assaulted during a search of his private areas conducted by a prison officer. The lawsuit, in which he demands over $1.6 million in compensation, was filed against several individuals, including former Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, former State Attorney Shai Nitzan, Deputy State Attorney Liat Ben-Ari, and the prosecutor in the case, Yehudit Tirosh.
Filber’s attorneys detailed in the lawsuit: "During his arrest and interrogation, particularly in the stages leading up to his signing of the state witness agreement, the defendants subjected Filber to seven circles of hell in a severe campaign of abuse. This culminated in a brutal act of sodomy committed by a prison officer at Hadarim Prison the night before he signed the agreement."
According to Filber's lawsuit, the assault, which he also testified about during Netanyahu’s trial, was "the result of premeditated planning and was deliberately carried out with the involvement of all the defendants, aiming to crush his dignity, humiliate him, and break his spirit."
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Filber’s attorneys further argue that the alleged abuse and the humiliating search "led to the confessions extracted from him and caused him to sign the state witness agreement while in a completely unstable mental state." They claimed that, during the search, "he was ordered to completely undress as part of his admission to Hadarim Prison as a detainee. During this process, his naked body was groped by a prison officer, who then committed a brutal act of sodomy against him."
In July of last year, Filber filed a lawsuit for approximately $130,000 against the state and police, alleging invasion of privacy and violation of personal space in the spyware affair. The lawsuit stated: "Police conducted a covert criminal investigation against Filber, during which they infiltrated his mobile phone using spyware."
Filber and his wife also sued the state, claiming the police used spyware to extract information from both his and his wife’s mobile phones.
"Under the guise of a wiretapping warrant, but in blatant and severe violation of that warrant and in clear breach of the law, the investigating unit used a hacking tool known as ‘The System’ (publicly identified as Pegasus spyware) to infiltrate Filber’s mobile phone and extract a significant amount of personal and private information," according to the lawsuit.