Israeli whistleblower freed after two years in jail

JERUSALEM - The Associated Press

Anat Kamm was sentenced to jail after leaking hundreds of confidential documents to a Haaretz reporter.

Israel’s prison service said Anat Kamm, a former soldier who passed hundreds of classified documents to a newspaper reporter has been freed after more than two years in jail. Officials said Kamm, who earned her the nickname “Israel’s Bradley Manning,” walked free Jan. 26 morning after the Israel Prison Service’s parole board approved Kamm’s early release for good behavior.

Kamm began serving a prison term at the end of 2011 after initially being convicted to four-and-a-half years of jail for passing military information to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau. The two years she spent under house arrest were not configured into the sentence.

Kamm sues Haaretz 

Kamm said then she was ideologically motivated to copy documents from computers between 2005 and 2007, when she served as a clerk in the office of the commander responsible for the West Bank. Kamm was originally charged with espionage and was questioned by the Israeli Security Agency. However, she signed a plea bargain and was charged with handing over secret information, without the original charges of espionage and “attempting to damage national security.”

Kamm filed a 2.6 million shekel ($744,000) lawsuit last April against Haaretz, Blau, Publisher Amos Schocken and the paper’s former Deputy Editor Avi Zilberberg. Following her release, she admitted that she would have done “a lot of things differently.” Prosecutors alleged Kamm was the source for a story accusing the military of killing Palestinian militants in violation of a Supreme Court ruling.