Political commentator Amit Segal on Sunday night released recordings in which Maj. Gen. Boaz Blat, head of the Israel Police Investigations and Intelligence Division, accuses the State Attorney’s Office of holding on to criminal files as a way to pressure suspects. He is also heard sharply criticizing the Justice Ministry’s Department of Internal Police Investigations.
In the recordings, Blat, who has headed the division for about two years, describes case files that sit untouched for long periods and, he says, are later pulled out again to pressure the people involved.
“I don’t like it when the police are used as a tool,” Blat says. “There are quite a few cases here where any reasonable person understands these are drawer files, you know, pressure levers on people. They put them in a drawer, do nothing with them for a year, and after a year they take them out and do a supplementary investigation.”
Haaretz legal and crime correspondent Josh Breiner said Blat had a point. “On the substance, there’s a lot of truth in what Boaz Blat says. It’s unacceptable for the State Attorney’s Office to sit on investigation files for so long,” he wrote. “Why is there still no indictment in the submarine affair? Kobi Yaakobi? The head of Lahav 433? Avishai Moalem?
“This is very bad. It opens the door not just to claims that investigations are being used as a pressure tool, but to their actual use that way. If there’s evidence, file an indictment. If there isn’t, close the case. These drawn-out ordeals are unacceptable and dangerous.”
Breiner also questioned when the recordings were made, noting that the date was not disclosed. “My guess is around the time Blat took the job two years ago, maybe even before, perhaps in an attempt to tell the person on the other end of the conversation, whose voice for some reason we don’t hear, what he wanted to hear,” he wrote.
He added that the recordings were also an embarrassment for National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. “What a huge failure for Ben Gvir, who says he brought governance, when a senior police commander tells him officers are terrified of the heads of crime organizations in the Arab sector. Either way, bombshell recordings from Amit Segal.”
Breiner ended on a different note: “Imagine if someone here had run a reign of terror over police officers. Say, by holding recordings of them, or dropping baseless hints on air. Go ahead and release everything, but all the conversations, from every side. Then we’ll know what the police were busy with, and what [someone] was busy with during four years in his post. Allegedly, of course.”
