Israel Matzav

Mossad agents caught in Christchurch earthquake?

New Zealand's Southland Times is reporting that four Israelis who were trapped in a van near the epicenter of the Christchurch earthquake in February were Mossad agents, three of whom escaped the country. The fourth person, Ofer Mizrachi, who was the van's driver, was found dead in the van, and was claimed to be carrying five passports.

Those four Israelis – Ofer Benyamin Mizrahi, 23, from Kibbutz Magal near Haifa, Michal Fraidman, Liron Sade and Guy Jordan – would later become a prime focus of the SIS investigation, along with the Israeli search and rescue squad and a group of forensic analysts from Israel that worked in the Christchurch morgue helping to identify earthquake victims.

The four, two men and two women, had been shopping in the central city on the morning of the earthquake and had returned to their van, parked in Gloucester St, when the quake hit. Mizrahi, the driver, was killed instantly, and Jordan, in the front passenger seat, smashed a window and climbed through the hole to escape. The two women, Fraidman and Sade, who were sitting in the back seat, also managed to crawl out.

They were unable to reach Mizrahi and, after taking photographs of the crushed van, made their way to Latimer Square, where Israeli officials had set up an emergency meeting point. Within 12 hours they had left New Zealand.

On Sunday, February 26, Mizrahi's body was recovered from the van and taken to the morgue where, during routine identity checks, he was found to be carrying at least five passports.

Meanwhile, the search and rescue squad dispatched from Israel had arrived in Christchurch but the offer of help was rejected by New Zealand authorities because the squad did not have accreditation from the United Nations.

According to Israeli newspaper reports, the squad was being funded by the parents of two other Israelis killed in the earthquake, Ofer Levy and Gabi Ingel, both 22, who were said to be in New Zealand on a backpacking holiday. The parents made repeated public appeals for the Israeli team to join the rescue, appeals that were dismissed by the New Zealand authorities until squad members were discovered in the sealed off "red zone" of the central city.

It is understood the squad members were confronted by armed New Zealand officers and removed from the area. That confrontation is understood to have led to intense diplomatic exchanges between New Zealand and Israel, though police have refused to comment on the incident or even acknowledge that it occurred, and the Israeli ambassador says he had not been advised of any such incident.

Another Israeli group, a forensic analysis team sent by the Israeli government, was welcomed in Christchurch and worked on victim identification in the morgue.

However, the SIS also began to have suspicions about this group when it began investigating possible links between the cache of passports found with Mizrahi, the immediate flight of his three companions, the high-powered Israeli interest shown in the earthquake, the unexplained behaviour of the supposed "search and rescue squad" and a mysterious seventh Israeli, in New Zealand illegally, who was first reported missing in the quake and then, weeks later, was reported to have left the country. They were also interested in the Facebook tribute page set up for Mizrahi that has attracted only five "likes" in the more than four months it has been on the social media site.

When it was realised the forensic analysts could have accessed the national police computer database, an urgent security audit was ordered.

As the SIS officer explained, it would take only moments for a USB drive to be inserted in a police computer terminal and loaded with a program allowing remote backdoor access.

"We were concerned that could have happened," the officer said.

"We carried out an urgent audit. If it had been done it would eventually have given the Israelis access to all of our intelligence."

The national database holds all records of convictions, firearms licences, lost and stolen property, criminal behaviour and identifying marks and observations taken by police. It is capable of sophisticated searching and data matching. The officer said the audit had not identified any suspicious files so far, but a wider SIS investigation was continuing.

"It all looks suspicious, but a lot of what the Israelis do raises suspicion. So lots of smoke but we haven't found any fires. The file remains open though."

Read the whole thing.

Israel's ambassador in the area has called the story 'science fiction.'

YNet adds:

Ofer Mizrahi was killed after a block of concrete collapsed on his car. Foreign reports suggest that a parcel of his effects contained several passports, possibly five or six. Ambassador Tzur confirmed that Mizrahi, 23, had more than one passport but was not aware of reports of as many as five or six.

Tzur rejected claims that three of Mizrahi's friends fled the country because they were Mossad agents. "I drove his three friends to the airport so they could go home. They were shocked and crying, they were just talking about their friend," he said.

Israel and New Zealand's relations have been strained since 2004's "passport affair" involving two Israelis who tried to fraudulently issue New Zealand passports. A local court ruled they were Mossad agents. New Zealand's prime minister even declared sanctions against Israel following the affair.

The crisis ended after Israel apologized 18 months later. The Israeli embassy reopened in August 2005, but remained an extension of the Canberra Embassy.

It's not clear to me who offered help and whose help was rejected. Both Zaka and the IDF are accredited byt he UN.

Hmmm.

Labels: Christchurch earthquake, Mossad

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:03 PM