A Syrian military court is now conducting a trial in which a Damascus Jew named Elie Cohen has been accused of spying on behalf of Israel, the New York Times reported today from Beirut.
According to the dispatch, which stated that the trial in Damascus was being conducted secretly and has not been reported in the Syrian press, Cohen is a wealthy Syrian Jew who had left his country for Israel, allegedly obtained training in espionage from the Israeli intelligence, then wert to Egypt, and finally re-immigrated to Syria, where he became one of the financial backers of the Baath Party.
He was presumably arrested recently when he accompanied Gen. Ali Ali Amer, the Egyptian chief of staff and head of the so-called Unified Arab Command, on an inspection trip of the Israel-Syrian border. There, according to the Syrian charges, he was recognized as a “spy” by Egyptian intelligence officers. Previously, according to the dispatch, he had accompanied Syria’s former Premier Salah el-Bitar on a trip to Jordan. He was reportedly trusted so fully by the Saath leaders in Syria that some of the members of the military court now trying him had been among his close associates.
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