Mordecai Louk, the “man in the trunk” who was sentenced in 1965 to 10 years in prison for spying for Egypt, was released yesterday after serving just over six years. Louk was arrested in Rome in November, 1964, after being discovered, drugged and bound, in a “diplomatic mail” trunk destined for Cairo. The Moroccan-born Israeli, then 29, returned to Israel voluntarily, claiming he would feel secure there, but a three-man district court concluded that “he did so for fear of his life” and actually “had no sense of responsibility in an honest society.” It developed that the Egyptian government had become dissatisfied with Louk’s work and decided to spirit him back in the trunk. The defendant’s plea was that he had agreed to spy for Egypt only to get out of jail, where he said he had been kept Illegally for 21 months as an escaped Israeli. He claimed he fed Egypt only worthless information. His attorney was Shmuel Tamir, now the leader of the Free Center faction in the Knesset.
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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.
