A police representative said in court on Wednesday that top officials in the military prosecution are maintaining a “bond of silence” about the leak of the Sde Teiman video.

Speaking at the hearing on Wednesday regarding the extension of the arrest of disgraced Military Advocate General (MAG) Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the representative told the judge. “There is still a persistent bond of silence among the suspect’s close associates, and we are trying to break it.”

The representative also revealed that the number of suspects in the case has risen to eight, with police having questioned “at least three additional suspects and others as witnesses.”

It was revealed last week that the number of senior officers in the Military Advocate’s Office who knew that Tomer-Yerushalmi had directly instructed a subordinate officer to transfer the Sde Teiman footage to the media was significantly higher than initially believed.

A complete “pact of silence” on the matter was held for 14 months by Tomer-Yerushalmi and her subordinates, including numerous senior IDF officers—no one spoke about the leak they were all aware of.

The secrecy was maintained even after an official internal investigation was supposedly launched to identify the source of the leak.

That investigation—led by Col. Gal Asahel, the Deputy Military Advocate General—did not include the questioning of the people in the immediate circle who had access to the video. These individuals were the first group within the legal corps who should have been interviewed, even as a matter of basic procedure. Some of them, according to the report, might have revealed the truth had they been properly questioned.

The code of silence was so deep that the affair might have remained buried indefinitely—if not for one officer, who decided to disclose the information during a routine Shin Bet polygraph examination.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)