Australian Mossad spy interfered in Israeli operation: TV report

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian emigrant and disgraced Mossad spy who died in an Israeli jail in 2010 was arrested after interfering in a secret Israeli intelligence operation to recover the bodies of soldiers killed in the 1982 Lebanon war, an Australian news report said on Tuesday.

Ben Zygier was arrested in January 2010 and held in secret under the name of Prisoner X on unspecified security charges. A judicial inquiry in Israel found Zygier, 34, hanged himself in a high-security jail cell.

Australian state television said Zygier unwittingly sabotaged a secret 2007 Mossad mission to exhume the bodies of three Israeli tank crewmen captured and killed by Syrian forces during Israel's invasion of Lebanon.

The television report quoted a former commander in Lebanon's Bekaa valley as saying that Zygier had revealed his name and that of a Lebanese agent for Israel to Lebanese intelligence.

Ziad al-Homsi, former mayor of a Lebanese village, told ABC television that he had been approached by Mossad in 2007 and flown to China on the pretext of attending a mayoral convention.

He was introduced to a Syrian man who said his brother in Europe was working to return the bodies of the three Israelis captured during the so-called Battle of Sultan Yacoub in the Bekaa Valley -- Israeli-U.S. citizen Zachary Baumel and his fellow Israeli crewmen Yehuda Katz and Zvi Feldman.

Al-Homsi told the ABC that he suspected he had been ensnared in a Mossad operation. He was eventually told by others involved that the missing men were buried in Lebanon.

"At the last meeting they informed me about the location of the corpses exactly. I had to find a way to get the bodies and keep them," al-Homsi said, though he was given no details on how the remains would be turned over to a separate Mossad team.

The mission failed, al-Homsi said, after he was arrested on May 16, 2009 by Lebanese special forces and later jailed for 15 years for spying for Mossad. He served three years.

Zygier's crime was to inadvertently reveal Al-Homsi's identity to a Lebanese man he was trying to turn into a double agent, but who worked for Lebanese intelligence, the ABC said.

FADING MOSSAD CAREER

Zygier, acting alone, was trying to trying to turn around a fading career with Mossad, to which he had been recruited in 2004 after taking Israeli citizenship in the mid-1990s.

Australia's Fairfax newspapers and Germany's Der Spiegel said in March that Zygier, the son of a prominent Melbourne Jewish family, had believed the man was close to Hezbollah militants.

The plan went wrong when Zygier tried to prove his credentials by giving up the name of al-Homsi and another Lebanese agent for Israel named Mustafa Ali Awadeh. His actions caused Israel to abandon the mission, the ABC said.

Israel has refused to disclose details of the case, refusing a request for information from Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The case has been the subject of gag orders in Israel.

Zygier was arrested by Israel's internal security service Shin Bet and later jailed at the high security Ayalon Prison, committing suicide in his cell later that year.

Israel's Justice Ministry said last month it would not press charges over the suicide, despite missteps by jail officials on the day of his death.

Zygier received "distressing news" from his wife hours before hanging himself, but the jailer overseeing surveillance video from the cell missed the moments leading up to his death.

The case was kept secret until February, when an Australian television expose uncovered it, sparking media debate about Zygier's intelligence role and the nature of his alleged crime.

(Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Ron Popeski)

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No charges in jail death of Australian Mossad spy

By Maayan Lubell

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel will not press charges over the prison suicide of a disgraced Mossad spy from Australia, despite a series of missteps by jail officials on the day of his death in 2010, the Justice Ministry said on Thursday.

Ben Zygier, 34, received "distressing news" from his wife just hours before hanging himself, but the jailer responsible for watching surveillance video from the isolation cell was away from the screen and missed the moments leading up to his death.

The case was kept secret until February, when an Australian television expose uncovered it, sparking frenzied media debate about Zygier's intelligence role and the nature of his alleged crime.

A report into his death published on Thursday suggested that the prison service had not complied with special instructions on supervising Zygier, who was not considered a top suicide risk despite admitting previous urges to kill himself.

However, the Attorney General said "the evidence is not sufficient in proving ... that the Prison Authority, or anyone else, negligently caused the deceased's death".

Without explicitly naming Zygier, Israel confirmed in 2010 that it had a dual nationality citizen in custody to prevent serious harm to national interests. The charges against him still remain top secret and under a gag order.

Australia's Fairfax newspapers and German Der Spiegel said last month that Zygier was a spy for the Mossad intelligence agency and had unwittingly given away secret information about Lebanese informants, who were later arrested and jailed in Lebanon.

"AGITATED AND UPSET"

According to Thursday's report, Zygier was held in isolation in a cell that was under 24-hour video surveillance. He had regular sessions with social workers and psychiatrists, and was allowed family visits at the jail in Ayalon, central Israel.

On the day of his death, the report said Zygier had seen his pregnant wife and daughter, and received undisclosed news that left him "crying, agitated and upset".

The prison social worker testified that Zygier often displayed such emotions after family visits. When she asked after Zygier's mood later on the same day, she was told that he was relaxed and watching television.

About two hours later, Zygier went into his bathroom, looped a wet sheet around his neck, tied it to the bars of a window and hanged himself. The guard monitoring the video had been asked to help out the understaffed team in the prison's central command center, which was not hooked up to the camera in question.

Lior Brand, a friend of Zygier's, told Reuters in March that he cared deeply about Israel and wanted to do his bit for its security, but lacked the required emotional resilience.

"There was a background security check, his friends told them that he was unfit ... they should not have recruited him," Brand said, without naming the agency that took Zygier in. "What hurts is that the whole thing could have been avoided."

(Editing by Crispian Balmer and Mark Trevelyan)

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Reputed Australian Mossad agent jailed after botched spy plan: papers

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian emigrant and reputed Israeli spy who died in a jail in Israel in 2010 had been arrested after a bungled and unauthorized bid to recruit a double agent with links to Lebanon's Hezbollah, Australian newspapers reported on Monday.

The man, Ben Zygier, was arrested in early 2010 and was held in secret under the name of Prisoner X on unspecified security charges. A judicial inquiry in Israel found Zygier, 34, hanged himself in a high-security jail cell.

Israel has refused to disclose details of the case, even refusing a request for information from Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the case has been the subject of gag orders in Israel.

But Australia's Fairfax newspapers and Germany's Der Spiegel magazine said after a joint investigation that Zygier had unwittingly given away secret information about Lebanese informants, who were later arrested and jailed in Lebanon.

"Zygier wanted to achieve something that he didn't end up getting," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted an unidentified, highly placed Israeli official as saying.

"Then he ended up on a precipitous path. He crossed paths with someone who was much more professional than he was."

The newspaper said Zygier, who took Israeli citizenship in the mid-1990s, was recruited to Israel's spy agency Mossad in 2004 and worked in Europe.

He was assigned to infiltrate companies with links to countries hostile to Israel, including Iran and Syria. It said Zygier was eventually pulled back to Tel Aviv and assigned to a desk job within Mossad.

In an attempt to prove himself and return to a field assignment, Zygier then set about trying to recruit a European man known to be close to Hezbollah militants, setting up meetings in late 2008 with the hope of recruiting the man as a double agent.

But the plan went wrong when Zygier tried to prove his credentials by giving up the names of Israel's top two Lebanese informants, Ziad al-Homsi and Mustafa Ali Awadeh, who were both arrested in 2009 and jailed for 15 years, the paper said.

When he was arrested in early 2010, Zygier was carrying a compact disc loaded with more intelligence files that he might have planned to pass on to his Hezbollah contact, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

An Australian government inquiry earlier this month said it found no evidence any Australian passports had been misused by either Zygier, a dual Australian citizen, or by Mossad.

Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr has confirmed Zygier was working for the Israeli government but stopped short of confirming he worked for Mossad.

(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by Paul Tait)

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