April 4, 2013

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Anat Kamm, the Israeli soldier who was jailed for turning classified Israeli military documents over to a reporter, is suing the Israeli daily Haaretz and journalist Uri Blau for revealing her identity.

Kamm filed a lawsuit Thursday with the Tel Aviv District Court, asking for $716,000 and lawyer’s fees. She reportedly claims that Haaretz exposed her to Shin Bet scrutiny and criminal proceedings, and thus owes her the compensation.

She was convicted in February 2011 of collecting, holding and passing on classified information without authorization. An espionage charge was dropped as part of a plea bargain.

Arrested in late 2009 or early 2010, Kamm admitted to stealing about 2,000 documents, hundreds identified as classified or top secret, which she downloaded to two discs, while serving her mandatory military service in the Israeli army in the Central Command. She gave the information to  Blau, a Haaretz reporter who wrote stories based on the information that was approved by the military censor. The stories led to a search for Blau’s source.

Blau served a four-month suspended prison sentence, which he served through community service, for accepting the information,

Following her military service, Kamm was a media reporter for Walla, an online news site that at the time was partly owned by Haaretz. She has been in the Neve Tirzah women’s prison since November 2011.
 

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