Germany's
Der Spiegel and Australia's
The Australian are reporting that Ben Zygier, the Mossad agent known as 'Prisoner X' who took his own life in an Israeli prison in 2010, had been sentenced to a minimum of ten years in jail for
exposing two Israeli spies to Hezbullah in a self-initiated bid to 'turn' a Hezbullah spy into a double agent.
According to the report, Siad al-Homsi and Mustafa ali Awadeh were
arrested in May 2009 for spying for Israel in Lebanon and sentenced to
long prison terms after Zygier passed their names to a Hezbollah
operative.
...
Zygier was eventually demoted and ordered to return to Israel in 2007
after his work failed to meet the Mossad's expectations. He left the
organization in 2008 to return to his native Australia, Der Spiegel reported.
The Australian quoted Fairfax newspapers, which carried out the joint investigation into Zygier with Der Spiegel,
as reporting that Zygier's contacts with the Hezbollah operative were
part of a "rogue" operation by which he attempted to get back into the
Mossad's good graces following his demotion.
According to the
report, the alleged Mossad agent had met with the Hezbollah operative in
hopes of turning him into a double agent. The Hezbollah operative who
Zygier hoped to turn then double-crossed him, sending information on the
two informants back to Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut.
Zygier
had given the Hezbollah operative information on the informants,
Israel's top two Lebanese assets, to prove he had access to valuable
knowledge, according to the report.
Fairfax reported that one of
the informants, Siad al-Homsi, had told Israel that he could lead them
to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
The report added that Zygier
was carrying discs with further information at the time of his arrest
that he may have intended on passing to the Hezbollah operative as well.
Once
arrested, Zygier quickly confessed to passing the intelligence and was
facing a ten year prison sentence, Fairfax reported, according to the Australian.
Sounds like a tragedy all the way around.
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