Israel has revealed for the first time that a former major in its army intelligence corps is serving a prison sentence for spying on behalf of an unnamed country.
There has been speculation that the unidentified country is the United States, but there has been no comment on that possibility from either Israeli or American officials.
The first details of an espionage case involving Maj. Yossi Amit were published Wednesday, after Israel’s Supreme Court lifted a secrecy ban that had been in effect since Amit’s arrest in 1986.
Amit, a former resident of Haifa, was apparently tried by the Haifa District Court in 1987 and sentenced to a 12-year prison term at a time when the maximum sentence for espionage was only 15 years. The maximum has since been extended to life.
Amit is said to be the most senior Israel Defense Force officer charged with espionage.
Some observers have speculated that Amit was the person written about in some American publications, including Penthouse magazine and The New York Times, which reported on the trial of an IDF officer in 1987 accused of spying for the United States.
The man was reported to have received payment from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and was uncovered by the Israelis a short while later.
OFFERED IN A SWAP FOR POLLARD?
Israel reportedly had offered to exchange this man for Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. naval intelligence officer convicted and sentenced to life in prison for spying on behalf of Israel. But Washington reportedly rejected the deal.
In Washington, the State Department would not comment on the case Wednesday.
Amit’s lawyer, Shmuel Tzang, denied other reports hinting that his client had been convicted of spying for Syria.
“Amit is an outstanding person and a good Zionist. He was not involved in spying for Syria, or for any Arab country or any enemy of Israel, and he never endangered Israel’s interests,” Tzang said.
Some have inferred from Tzang’s remarks that Amit was spying for the United States, passing on information not directly concerning Israel itself — just as Pollard claims he provided Israel with information gleaned by U.S. intelligence about Israel’s enemies, and not about America itself.
Dedi Zucker, chairman of the Knesset Constitutional Committee, reportedly asked Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to respond to reports that an undefined number of Israelis are being held as spies in Israeli prisons, without any publication of their identities or the fact of their incarceration.
According to the account, Rabin disclosed that these reports were true.
“We aim to publish shortly some information about the fact of their trial and imprisonment,” the prime minister was quoted as saying.
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