10/30 – Israeli Court Allows Police To Keep Netanyahu Aide Yonatan Urich’s Phones In Qatargate Investigation, Overturning Lower Court Ruling – Even As Police Admit They Cannot Yet Access The Devices – Haaretz

 10/30 — Israeli Court Allows Police To Keep Netanyahu Aide Yonatan Urich’s Phones In Qatargate Investigation, Overturning Lower Court Ruling – Even As Police Admit They Cannot Yet Access The Devices

The district court’s decision overturns a ruling issued Sunday by a magistrate court judge who said it was the ‘easiest decision he had ever made’

An Israeli district court has allowed police to keep the phones of Yonatan Urich, a close aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as part of the so-called Qatargate affair. The ruling reverses a lower court’s decision earlier this week that ordered the devices returned, saying police had not properly justified holding them.

The Qatargate affair centers on suspicions that Urich and another Netanyahu aide, Eli Feldstein, maintained improper ties with Qatari intermediaries.

The district court’s decision overturns a ruling issued Sunday by Magistrate Judge Menachem Mizrahi, who had rejected a police request to continue holding the devices as part of the investigation, arguing that the police had failed to submit a confidential report detailing the probe’s progress.

In response to the police appeal, District Court Judge Yaakov Spasser sent the case back to the Magistrate’s Court, ruling that there was no requirement to submit such a document. Spasser said that Mizrahi had “erred in his handling of the matter” and that he “was not authorized to refrain from discussing the request on its merits.”

Spasser added that if the lower court had believed a confidential report was necessary, it could have asked police to prepare one, “even at the cost of a brief postponement of the hearing.” He clarified that submitting such a report in proceedings of this kind is customary but not mandatory, unlike in detention hearings or cases involving restrictions on a suspect’s liberty.

“As there is no dispute that the request was not, in fact, examined on its merits, the appeal is accepted and the case is returned to the lower court, which shall hold a substantive hearing on the matter and issue its decision in accordance with its judgment and discretion,” Spasser ruled.

Police representatives told the court they wanted to keep the devices until a hacking software update was released because they had been unable to access them so far. “Hacking and extracting information from two of the devices have failed. As for the third, we were told the model is unhackable, so we didn’t try,” they said.

Judge Menachem Mizrahi dismissed the request, calling it the easiest decision he had ever made. At the police’s request, he stayed the ruling for 48 hours to allow them to appeal to the District Court.

Sunday’s hearing followed last month’s police request to extend the seizure of phones belonging to several individuals involved in the Qatargate affair, including businessmen David Saig and Gil Birger. The two agreed to an additional 180-day extension, but Urich refused.

🔗SOURCE ➡️ Haaretz [Full Article]

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READ FULL ARTICLE: This article originally appeared on Haaretz

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