Israel Matzav

Poland turning Israeli over to Germany

Poland has decided to turn over to Germany an alleged Mossad agent who is accused of being involved in the liquidation of Hamas terror chief Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, and not to return him to Israel as Israel had requested.

“The prosecutor's office will ask the Warsaw court to order the handover to Germany,” Polish spokeswoman Monika Lewandowska was quoted as saying by Poland's PAP news agency. Israel has not commented on the report, which did not mention Brodsky by name.

Der Spiegel reported last Saturday that Polish authorities arrested Brodsky at the Warsaw airport two weeks ago on suspicion of fraudulently obtaining a German passport, used in the assassination of Mabhouh.

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Israeli ministers had pleaded with Poland not to extradite Brodsky. "Poland needs to tell Germany that it is sending an Israeli citizen to Israel, and if there is some complaint against him, we have legal procedures [that] have great credibility with the international legal system," Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov said. "First they have to prove that he has done what he is accused of.”

Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz stated, "Israel should oppose the extradition of any Israeli citizen to another country and act to bring him back to this country.”

'Brodsky's arrest may be indicative of another significant failure by the Mossad.

First, if the 43-year-old Brodsky is in fact a Mossad agent – as appears to be the case according to the media reports originating in Germany – then why was he flying with a passport for which an international arrest warrant had been issued? Did the Mossad not know that Germany had issued such a warrant, and if not, why not?

Second, the affair casts a worrisome light on Israel’s relations with Poland and especially with Germany. While those relations have been hailed in recent years as tighter than ever, the arrest of a Mossad agent by Poland and on behalf of Germany could deal a blow to those ties.

The fact that the affair reached the press in and of itself demonstrates a possible failure by Israel, if the Mossad was involved, as foreign reports suggest. In the Mossad there is a branch called Tevel, which is in charge of forging ties with other foreign espionage agencies, such as the CIA in the United States, Poland’s Agencja Wywiadu (AW) and Germany’s Bundesnachrichtendienst, more commonly referred to as the BND.

JPost's Yaakov Katz asks whether in light of the arrest, the Mabhouh liquidation (assuming that Israel did it) was worthwhile. I believe that it was. So what if the rest of the world thinks it now knows that Israel uses dual citizens' foreign passports to create foreign passports. No one has tied Israel to the liquidation anyway, and with the increased use of biometrics, Israel was going to have to change its tactics sooner or later. And besides, I'm not convinced that the Mossad's tactics are so much different than any other spy agency in the World - only that we usually carry them out better, and that we're operating in an unusually hostile environment at this time.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:52 PM