ALBAWABA - On Friday, Israeli officials let former Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi go free, but they put her under house arrest. This was just as her missing phone—the device that had "puzzled Israel" for days—was finally found.
These events happened five days after Tomer-Yerushalmi went missing and a week after she quit and admitted to leaking a video last year that caused a lot of trouble at home and abroad.
A judge let her go after 10 days of house arrest, a 20,000 shekel bail (about $6,000), and told her not to talk to anyone connected to the case for 55 days.
The ex-official is suspected of fraud, breaking trust, abusing power, obstructing justice, and sharing materials related to the leaked video in an illegal way.
The video, which was shot last year, shows Israeli soldiers beating up a Palestinian prisoner from Gaza in the Sde Teiman detention center. The prisoner got very hurt and had to go to the hospital. People were very angry when it came out.
Tomer-Yerushalmi was arrested last Sunday after going missing for several hours off the coast near Tel Aviv. Police thought she might have tried to kill herself.
Investigators couldn't find her phone when they found her, which made them think it might have evidence of wrongdoing or that she had tried to destroy it.
For days, police and volunteers looked for the device on the beaches of Tel Aviv and in the areas around them. It was finally found on a beach in northern Tel Aviv on Friday.
Pictures that are going around online show the phone still on, with a lock screen picture of Tomer-Yerushalmi and her daughter.
The police said that officers took the phone for forensic testing.
Channel 12 quoted a source close to the investigation as saying that the phone was definitely hers, even though there were doubts at first, because it was still partially charged and working after five days, which investigators thought was strange.
The woman who found the device told the news that she wasn't looking for it; she just happened to find it while swimming in the ocean.
She said, "I'm so excited. Everyone in the country has been talking about this phone, and in the end, I'm the one who finds it." She called the police right away after opening the phone and seeing the lock screen image.
