Kabarik Jacobian, an Armenian born in Cairo who, according to the Israeli security authorities was given careful training for spying operations inside Israel over a period of years, was arraigned here in magistrate’s court today on charges of espionage, and ordered held for 15 days for further interrogation, Security officials said: “We have a fat fish here.”
Jacobian’s story and his preparation for an espionage career on behalf of the Egyptian intelligence read like a cloak-and-dagger thriller after it had been revealed by the security officials here. In Cairo, where he had become a photographer, he attended an Egyptian intelligence school. Given false identity papers, with which he registered as an Arab refugee, he was sent to Brazil. There, an Egyptian agent, Salim Aziz el-Said, sent him to Sao Paulo, where Jacobian presented himself as a Jew by the name of Rzhak Kochuk.
In preparation for his posing as a Jew, he had been circumcised in a hospital in Cairo, and had been trained in a certain amount of Jewish tradition. He “proved” his Jewish background in Sao Paulo by showing photographs of the Jewish cemetery in Cairo and claiming that one of the tombs had held the remains of his Jewish grandmother.
From Sao Paulo he went back to Rio de Janeiro, where he registered with the Jewish Agency as a Jewish emigrant to Israel. Arriving in Israel, in 1961, with secret Egyptian orders to join the Israeli army, particularly the armored corps, he tried to get into the army. However, he was sent first to Kibbutz Negbah to learn Hebrew. Later, he did join the Israeli army and, after a year’s service, asked for release from the service. application for release was granted.
By the time he was released from the army, he was already under the surveillance of the Israeli authorities. However, he was allowed to go about his personal affairs, in an effort to trace his fellow-spies in a ring in this country. He was finally arrested this weekend, at his home, in Ashkelon. Security officials said he has confessed.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
