The retired officer was arrested two weeks ago after making the threat in an anonymous telephone call to Israeli public radio and held for four days before undergoing psychiatric observation.

"He was traumatized by Palestinian attacks he witnessed and had to be retired from office," police spokeswoman Linda Menuhin said, without giving further details of the officer's identity or how he was caught.

The mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, stands in Jerusalem's Old City. Jews say it is the same site of the Jewish temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, and some militant Jewish groups want to take it back by force.

Police had opposed publication of details of the affair for fear of sparking a backlash but a media gag was lifted by a Jerusalem court Wednesday.

"I was not convinced that keeping the black-out was necessary to preserve public order," judge Yitzhak Anbar said, according to the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot.

But the judge said the man involved would do better with psychiatric treatment than a prison term.

Israel has boosted security around Al-Aqsa for fear of attacks or mass suicides by apocalyptic Christian sects in the run-up to the year 2000, which they claim will hasten the return of the Messiah.

In 1994 extremist American-born Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 worshippers attending morning prayers in Ramadan in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron before being lynched by the surviving congregation.

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