Israel lifts Press curbs on assassinations arrest

Israel lifted months of censorship on a military espionage case by confirming the arrest of a former woman soldier charged with leaking more than 2,000 military documents on an Army scheme to assassinate Palestinian militants.

Anat Kamm, 23, has been under house arrest since December, but the case was kept secret by a court order.

Kamm is accused of copying more than 2,000 classified military

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documents and giving them to the Haaretz newspaper. She is charged with passing information with the intent of harming national security. Her lawyer, Eitan Lehman, denied this.

The Justice Ministry said the gagging order was necessary for security reasons and to allow officials to try to recover the documents. The Haaretz journalist who received them is now in London.

Military assassinations are in violation of a Supreme Court ruling in 2006. Israel's targeted killing policy was one of its most contentious in its years of bloody battle with Palestinians.

The Haaretz report cited a document from March 2007 that included an order from Maj Gen Yair Naveh, to shoot three top Palestinian militants. One was later shot dead. Naveh told Haaretz at the time that the killing was justified. He is now retired and refused to comment.

Israel requires reporters to submit stories to a military censor that can block stories deemed damaging to national security.