The Haifa District Court sentenced today Professor Kurt Sitte, a world-famous scientist, to five years in prison on conviction of charges of espionage.
Professor Sitte, until his detention last fall, was head of the physics department of the Haifa Institute of Technology and deputy director of its scientific research department. Charged with passing secret material to foreign agents, Prof. Sitte was found guilty of four of seven counts of spying.
Well-known for his research in cosmic radiation, the scientist frequently attended scientific gatherings in other countries, particularly in East Europe. A few months before his arrest, he visited Moscow and Prague as a delegate to scientific conferences held in those cities. Prof. Sitte was born in 1910 in the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia and was incarcerated by the Nazis in Buchenwald.
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