Former Netanyahu aide living in Serbia to be questioned by Israeli cops

Investigators from Israel Police’s Lahav 433 major crimes unit will fly to Serbia this week to question a former senior election campaign adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Hebrew media reports on Sunday.

Yisrael Einhorn will be questioned in relation to his role in the so-called Qatargate affair and the leaked documents case that have marred the Prime Minister’s Office for the past several months.

Einhorn has been living in Belgrade over the past year, while working as an adviser to Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, and has not returned to Israel since a probe was opened last year into an intelligence leak.

Einhorn, along with a top aide to the prime minister, Jonatan Urich, and ex-spokesman Eli Feldstein, is a key suspect in the intelligence leak case, which involves the theft of classified IDF documents and the leaking of one of them to the German daily, Bild.

The three are also all suspects in the ongoing Qatargate probe, and investigators have sought to question Einhorn over his PR work for Qatar through his public relations firm, Perception, which he ran alongside Urich.

The two spearheaded a pro-Qatari campaign to cast the Gulf state in a positive light ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, hosted in Doha, according to Hebrew media reports at the time, which corresponds with the start of the probe’s timeframe.

Einhorn had previously tried to negotiate a deal with the State Attorney’s Office that would see him return to Israel to testify without being arrested, the Kan public broadcaster reported, but the talks fell through.

He then reportedly requested to be interrogated in Serbia, but that was initially rejected by the prosecutor’s office, which preferred to either wait for him to return to Israel on his own accord and then arrest him, or, alternatively, to initiate extradition proceedings.