Israeli Mossad :: NET2 News

The Supreme State Security Court on Monday recused itself from hearing the trial of two suspects accused of spying for Israel.

State-run news service MENA reported that the court stepped down from presiding over the trial of Bashar Ibrahim Abu Zeid, a Jordanian communications engineer, and Ophir Herare, a fugitive Israeli Mossad officer, for unknown reasons.

The trial will start over from the beginning at a yet to be determined court.

The decision comes after a judge rejected Abu Zeid’s request to be tried by a different court in September.

The defense team requested that an expert examine the phone tapping device authorities accused Abu Zeid of using to record calls to determine if it in fact had made any recordings. The lawyer also requested that Abu Zeid be released from custody, as he has already been detained for a year and a half without being found guilty, and his place of residence was known to the court.

State-run newspaper Al-Akhbar quoted defense lawyer Ahmed al-Ganzouri as saying that the prosecutor had refused to produce any evidence proving the allegations against his client. The prosecution was hiding behind the law on general intelligence to get around providing any evidence, Ganzouri claimed.

Egyptian law prohibits members of the General Intelligence Services — such as those that arrested Abu Zeid — from making any statements concerning their work due to national security.

Ganzouri requested that his client be tried before a regular criminal court. He also requested on Monday that his client be allowed to continue the trial from outside the defendant’s cage, but that request was denied.

Abu Zeid was arrested by Egyptian security forces in March 2011. Authorities accuse him of entering the country after the 25 January uprising to work as an agent for the Mossad.

Fellow defendant Ophir Herare is alleged to have been responsible for overseeing Abu Zeid’s work in Egypt. Herare fled the country before being brought before the court, and is now being tried in absentia.

Intelligence service agents claim that Abu Zeid and Herare agreed to intercept international calls coming into Egypt and transfer them to Israel to allow Israeli security services to gather information on Egyptian national security.

The prosecution also alleges that Herare asked Abu Zeid to identify Egyptian intelligence agents working in telecommunications.

Abu Zeid was also charged with collecting data on employees working with Egyptian mobile operators and who travel abroad for work, with the aim of recruiting suitable candidates to work for the Mossad.

Edited translation from MENA

Islamist forces in Egypt on Monday condemned yesterday's attack on security forces guarding the Egyptian border in Rafah, which killed 16 officers and soldiers and wounded seven others.

The statements were made as President Mohamed Morsy, head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, General Intelligence Services head Mourad Mowafy and Interior Minister Ahmed Gamal Eddin visited Rafah today to assess the situation.

The Muslim Brotherhood said in a statement on Monday that the attack “could be attributed to the Mossad, which has been seeking to abort the Egyptian revolution, especially as it had several days ago instructed Israeli citizens who were in Sinai to leave immediately.”

The statement also said that the incident “aims to add problems at the border to those already plaguing the country internally following the collapse of a corrupt system, and attempts to claim the failure of the new Egyptian government that was formed only three days ago.”

“The incident is also an attempt to disrupt the president’s reform project and drive a wedge between the Egyptian administration and its people, and the Palestinian government and the people of Gaza,” the statement concluded.

Yousry Hammad, spokesperson for the Salafi Nour Party, accused unnamed foreign organizations of carrying out the attack, and denied that Islamists had anything to do with it.

“Salafis have been against the use of violence throughout history,” he said.

Hammad also said the party leaders told the interior minister that he must face up to extremists in Sinai with all his strength.

The party rejected the reinstatement of the Emergency Law to fight violence, stressing that such crimes should be handled with ordinary laws.

Adel Afify, head of the Salafi Asala Party, called on Morsy and Prime Minister Hesham Qandil to form a fact-finding committee to discover any information that has been hidden from the president to embarrass him and his government and falsely accuse Islamists of being behind the attacks. Afify held security services responsible for "deliberately failing to prevent the incident."

Jama'a al-Islamiya and the Islamic Jihad group also condemned the attack, calling for those behind it to be brought to justice, be they extremist Islamic groups, Al-Qaeda, Palestinians or the Israeli Mossad.

“They aim to embarrass the president and drive a wedge between the Islamists and the army,” said Sheikh Osama Qassem, a leading figure in the Islamic Jihad. “I do not rule out the involvement of Israel in this ugly incident.”

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

Tags: President Mohamed Morsy, Interior Minister Ahmed Gamal Eddin, Mourad Mowafy, Salafi Nour Party, the Egyptian border, Armed Forces Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, security forces

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