Israel charges reporter over leaked army documents

Prosecutors on Thursday filed charges against an Israeli journalist over secret military documents he received from a former soldier now in prison for spying, the justice ministry said.

"A short while ago charges were filed in the Tel Aviv magistrates court against the journalist Uri Blau for the offence of possession of secret information without intending to harm state security," the ministry said in a statement.

It said the indictment was part of a bargain in which Blau would enter a guilty plea in exchange for a four-month jail term which could be commuted to community service, subject to the approval of community service officials.

The statement said former soldier Anat Kam had passed on 1,800 documents to Blau.

He used some of them in a 2008 article in the left-leaning Tel Aviv daily Haaretz, which said troops had been ordered to carry out targeted killings of Palestinian militants in violation of a supreme court order.

Blau later handed over to security agents the classified documents in his possession.

Kam was sentenced in October to four and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to leaking the documents.

She has said her actions were ideologically motivated and that she wanted to expose the army's policies in the occupied Palestinian territories.

scw/hc