Egypt’s interior minister, Abdul Halim Mussa, met Tuesday in Cairo with the Israeli envoy to his country, seeking to defuse tension over three Israeli Arabs detained in Cairo on charges of spying for Israel.
In his talks with Ambassador Ephraim Dubek, Mussa flatly denied Egyptian media reports quoting him as saying the detainees had confessed to spying for the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency.
The meeting was the first nigh-level contact between Egyptian and Israeli officials on the case since the Egyptians arrested 41-year-old Farres Mussarti and his 17-year-old daughter Faya, residents of Ramla, last week in Cairo.
Farres Mussarti’s 21-year-old son, Majed, was arrested Sunday, reportedly when entering Egypt from Libya, allegedly carrying a forged passport and military documents.
The Egyptian news media has been proclaiming with screaming headlines that Israeli spies were captured.
The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem was furious after the Egyptian press quoted Mussa as saying officially that the suspects confessed.
Israel accused the Egyptians of deliberately feeding stories to their news media while keeping Israel in the dark about the case. Israel was also rankled by Egypt’s refusal to allow an Israeli consular representative to interview the detainees.
The interior minister attributed the sensational stories in the press to a “misunderstanding” of his announcement that the Israelis were being held on suspicion. He said they could be interviewed as soon as the investigation is completed.
It was the first time since Israel and Egypt signed their 1919 peace treaty that Israeli citizens have been detained on suspicion of spying.
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