The U.S. District Court in Manhattan has allowed the three Israeli citizens indicted here for conspiracy to sell American weapons to Iran to return to Israel until their trial, scheduled to begin May 18.
The permission of the court hinged on an assurance from the Israeli government that it would not prevent the defendants from returning to America for the trial. The court received a letter recently containing the necessary assurances.
Guri and Israel Eisenberg, and Brig. Gen. Avraham Bar-Am were indicted in April along with 13 other defendants on charges of conspiracy to resell about $2 billion of American weapons stored in arsenals of other countries to Iran.
The defendants have close ties to several key players in the U.S. government-sanctioned arms sales, including the Iranian intermediaries Adnan Khashoggi and Manucher Ghorbanifar. Sam Evans, the alleged middleman in the conspiracy, was Khashoggi’s lawyer for many years. The relationship of the defendants to those involved in the U.S.-approved deals will likely be a central issue in the trial.
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