Roni Alsheikh (or Roni Alsheich, Hebrew: רוני אלשיך, born 20 March 1963) is an Israeli former intelligence officer and head of the Israel Police. After serving as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, Alsheikh joined Shin Bet and rose to become its deputy head before being appointed General Commissioner of the Israel Police, serving in the role from 2015 to 2018.
Alsheikh joined the Shin Bet in December 1988, and was appointed deputy director in September 2014. In September 2015, Minister of Public Security, Gilad Erdan announced Alsheikh's nomination to be the 18th General Commissioner of the Israel Police.[3][4][5] He served in the role for three years. During his time as Police Commissioner, he oversaw criminal investigations into then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over corruption allegations. The investigations eventually resulted in the indictment and Trial of Benjamin Netanyahu. Alsheikh's term as Police Commissioner ended after three years. It was not extended to a fourth year as is usually customary. The refusal to extend his term was widely seen as an act of retaliation by Netanyahu over the corruption probes.[6]
NSO violations of civil rights
Alsheikh is implicated in starting an illegal surveillance program in the Israeli police and using undemocratic and illegal surveillance software to break into civilians phones and extracting information without the authorization of judges and without proper legislation.[7] However, the subsequent Marari report found that in all the technological systems used for tapping communications between computers in the hands of the police that were examined, there was no indication that police operated to tap mobile phones without a judicial warrant. Also, no indication was found that it used NSO's Pegasus without a judicial warrant to penetrate the phones of the names published in Calcalist.[8]