Officer X: Blood of mysterious IDF officer analyzed in US

The blood of Officer X, an IDF intelligence officer who died under unknown circumstances in prison in May, was analyzed for the amounts of drug concentration with inconclusive results received on August 18.

The blood test found that Officer X had normal concentrations of a regularly taken prescription medication, but the results for a second drug were inconclusive. 

The parents of the officer were updated about the results on Friday morning. 

“from the very beginning we knew that he didn’t commit suicide, but that other reasons led to his tragic death. The results of the toxicology tests that there was no overdose of medication in his blood, and strengthens our assessment that our son did not choose to end his life,” said the officer’s parents.Ynet also reported that the bereaved family called upon “the IDF chief of staff to recognize him as an IDF casualty.”

The blood samples were sent to a lab in the United States with explicit instructions from the Health Ministry to check the concentration of the two prescription drugs. The complexity of the tests was heavily emphasized by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit. The military noted that the difficulty of the procedure sometimes led to inconclusive results. Further, the test was so complex that it was beyond the capabilities of laboratories in Israel and for this reason sent to the US.

Experts will further examine the lab results and continue the investigation.

The unidentified soldier known as Officer X was a military intelligence officer. 

He had been behind bars since September. He was found in serious condition in his cell at the newly-opened Neve Tzedek military prison on the night of May 16 and later pronounced dead. However, he had also spent time at Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa two months before his death.

Officer X’s identity and a good amount of information about the case have been released by news websites overseas. But many aspects of the case remain under a tight gag order and are heavily censored by the military and the court.

Officer X served in a top IDF intelligence division. While the military won’t say which one, it has been announced he was not charged with espionage or contact with the enemy. His alleged offenses caused “severe damage to national security,” according to the IDF, and were personally motivated. The parents of Officer X previously wrote a letter to IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi over the affair and demanded an end to the “defamation campaign” against their late son. In the letter, the parents demanded “not to bury the truth, not to whitewash and not to hide it,” as well as to clarify the circumstances surrounding their son’s death.