Former Israeli minister arrested on charges of spying for Iran

Source: Xinhua| 2018-06-18 22:38:02|Editor: yan
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JERUSALEM, June 18 (Xinhua) -- A former Israeli minister and lawmaker were arrested on suspicion of espionage for Iran, Israel's Shin Bet security agency said Monday.

Gonen Segev, 62, was arrested in May but his detention has been kept from the public under a court gag order until Monday.

He was charged on Friday with offenses of delivering information to the enemy, espionage and assisting the enemy during war.

Segev lived in Nigeria for the past seven years before arriving in Equatorial Guinea in May. He was then transferred to Israel at the request of the Israeli police after Guinea denied his entry because of his criminal past.

According to a statement released by the Shin Bet, the investigation revealed that the Iranian intelligence has recruited him as a spy.

"In 2012, a contact was made between Segev and officials with the the Iranian Embassy in Nigeria, and later Segev even attended two meetings with his operators in Iran," the statement read.

Segev allegedly met with Iranian intelligence agents several more times in different locations around the world, it added.

He also received a specialized communications system to encrypt the messages between him and his operators.

Segev tipped Iran off about Israel's "energy market, security sites, and buildings of officials in political and security positions" by forming ties with Israeli citizens who work in the fields of security, defense, and foreign diplomacy, the Shin Bet said.

But Segev's lawyers, Eli Zohar and Moshe Mazor, said some of the allegations in the Shin Bet statement were overblown.

"Even at this early stage, it is possible to say that the indictment paints a different picture from the one shown in the (Shin Bet) statement," they said.

Segev, a former parliament member with the right-wing party of Tzomet, served as Israeli minister of energy and infrastructure between 1994 and 1996.

After his political career, he turned to business. In 2004, he was found guilty of attempting to smuggle thousands of ecstasy pills from Amsterdam to Israel, and served five years in prison with a plea bargain.

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