An international scandal is growing after an Australian-Israeli man with ties to Israel’s spy agency, the Mossad, died inside a maximum security prison in Israel. For more than two years, the Israeli government imposed a strict gag order on his 2010 death, but now the secret is leaking out. Israel has called his death a suicide, but new information could emerge now that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has revealed his name: Ben Zygier.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation went on to identify Prisoner X as Ben Zygier, an Australian-Israeli citizen who was allegedly a member of Mossad. While Israel has now lifted the gag order, much still remains unknown about the case. There were reports that Zygier was one of three Australians who changed their names several times and took out new Australian passports for travel in the Middle East and Europe for their work with Mossad. A Kuwaiti newspaper linked Zygier to the assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was drugged and suffocated in his hotel room in Dubai months before Prisoner X was arrested.
Dan Yakir talking:
It’s only in regard to the proceedings we initiated two years ago. ACRI heard for the first time about Prisoner X in June 2010, six months before his death. And we addressed the attorney general, raising our concern about the prisoner being totally isolated and under complete secrecy. A few days after we heard about his death in mid-December, we filed a motion with the district court to lift the gag order, or at least limit its sweeping scope, to allow publication of some details about the charges brought against him, and especially the concern about how he was found dead in the most protected cell of the prison services. After the district court dismissed our motion, we filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court heard the appeal in February two years ago. But the judges also were—the judges—also the judges on the Supreme Court heard the security services for an hour and a half ex parte. And after that, they told us they were convinced that the whole—that the complete secrecy is justified.
In May 2010, there was a short-lived report on an Israeli news site, Ynet, regarding a Prisoner X held in Ayalon Prison in complete isolation, and even the prison guards don’t know his identity and are prohibited from talking to him. After a few hours, this report vanished, and it raised our concerns regarding the rights of the prisoner and the conditions that he is held, but also the complete secrecy around the affair. And we tried to gather some details about it but couldn’t. And that’s why we addressed the attorney general for the first time. Six months later, we got information from a—from a source connected to the media about him being found dead in his cell, and then we filed the motion with the courts.
There were a few cases in the last couple of years. In all those cases, ACRI either filed motions with the court or approached the attorney general, but they were much—for a much limited period of time, in the case of Anat Kamm, a soldier in the IDF who was charged and convicted of copying hundreds of classified documents, and other cases. In the past, there were a few exceptional cases where prisoners were held under false identity for years. And the most notable one is Dr. Marcus Klingberg, a biologist who was convicted of espionage on behalf of the U.S.S.R., and he was held during most of his years in prison under false identity, and his trial was under complete secrecy.
Usually, Palestinian prisoners are not held under secret conditions or in isolation, but there was also the case of the engineer, Abu Sisi, from Gaza, who allegedly was kidnapped by the Mossad from a train in Kiev, and charges were brought against him of being involved in the rocket firing on Israel. And at first, the mere fact that he was arrested was under a gag order. After we filed a motion, this was lifted, but his whole trial was also conducted behind closed doors.
Antony Loewenstein talking:
What essentially has come out in the last week has been a litany of information which really goes to the heart, I think, of what regularly happens between Australia and Israel. On the one hand, what happened to this gentleman, Ben Zygier, is unique. Not that many Israeli Australians die in Israeli prisons, either murdered or suicide. That’s true. But on the other hand, the facilitation by the Australian Jewish establishment and the Australian intelligence services of young Jews to Israel, to live there, to obviously serve in the IDF, and sometimes work for Mossad, is not that unusual. It doesn’t get talked about, the press doesn’t really examine it very often, but it’s not that unusual. And it goes to the heart, in some ways, of what the Jewish Zionist lobby here is about in Australia and indeed in many Western countries, the U.S., which is to facilitate and blindly support Israeli security.
the response by the establishment Jewish community has essentially been virtual silence. When the story broke last week, they have—virtually every Jewish lobby group has said nothing, literally nothing, until yesterday. There was a statement released by the leading Jewish organization in Australia which had a very kind of benign statement saying that we are encouraged by the fact that Israel and Australia will undergo a investigation, which I suspect will be a bit of a whitewash.
The Australian government is embarrassed, because the details of this case remain murky. One of the things that hasn’t been mentioned is that during the Dubai hit on the Hamas operative in 2010, the Australian passports were used and forged for that mission, amongst other countries, as well. And the Australian government publicly at the time was pretty upset about this, as other governments were, as well. But in private, I’ve heard from a variety of sources, that in fact the reality was that this sort of thing is known to happen. Many governments do it, including our own government, my government, the Australian government.
So, officially, the Australian and the Israelis would like this issue to disappear. And one of the things that’s become very clear in Australia in the last week—and indeed this is reflected, I think, in the fact that the Australian Jewish establishment sees its role as endorsing and enforcing what Israel does, whether it’s backing the occupation or supporting a strike on Iran—all those things fit into this narrative, which is young Jews who go to young Jewish schools in Australia—Australia is one of the most pro-Israel countries in the world, along with South Africa and, of course, obviously, the U.S.—that it’s not that surprising this sort of thing has happened. The details are unique, but the facilitation of a gentleman like Ben Zygier to undergo these kind of actions by Mossad is not that unusual. It just doesn’t usually get talked about in the press.
this has been discussed in the wider press, in the wider media and indeed in many public forums in the last week—has been a lot of Australians are uncomfortable with the fact that an Australian citizen can go to Israel, become an Israeli citizen, join the IDF, undergo some kind of training and potentially work for Mossad and commit acts which, and in any definition, are breaches of international law, whether it’s the assassination of Hamas leaders in Dubai or involved in other strikes against Iranian nuclear scientists. So, many people feel uncomfortable about this.
And one of the things that we do see in Australia, and we see it in the U.S. and many countries, is when Israel, for example, starts a war, whether it’s against Lebanon or Gaza or elsewhere, you see a number of Australian Jewish dual nationals go to Israel to fight in the IDF with those—with the Israeli military. And that sort of thing, I think, makes a lot of Australians uncomfortable—rightly so, in my view. And I think there needs to be a real question here—this is one of the things that’s being talked about in circles, not so much publicly in the Australian Jewish community, but certainly privately and indeed in the wider press—that why does the Australian government feel comfortable facilitating young Jews to move to Israel, potentially commit acts of, arguably, in certain cases, terrorism, or at least breaches of international law, in Gaza or Lebanon or Dubai, wherever Ben Zygier may have been behind it.
But one of the things that also is involved in this story is that the Australian intelligence services knew what Ben Zygier was doing. One of the things that remains unclear is exactly why the Israelis arrested Ben Zygier and put him in high-security prison. Was it because he was leaking information to the Australian intelligence services? Was he about to break some story to the press? Was there a crisis of conscience? We don’t know. These certainly are allegations that have been talked about here by a number of reliable sources, and indeed in Israel, as well. So, yes, the Australian intelligence services publicly are talking about an investigation, but just like in the U.S., they are incredibly opaque. There is not really any kind of legislative transparency in the way ASIO, which is the intelligence services here, operates. So, as much as we like to think that there would be some kind of investigation which is released publicly, the sad reality is that both Australia and Israel would like this situation to remain as it is today—in other words, very, very close relationship.
– source democracynow.org
Dan Yakir, chief legal counsel for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
Antony Loewenstein, journalist, author, and co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices.