Nine Arabs were sentenced in District Court here today to prison terms ranging from nine years to 18 months on charges of espionage against Israel and failing to report espionage activities to the Israel Government.
The men were all residents of the village of Umm El Fahm, in the west bank area, near the Jenin-Haifa Road about five miles from Jenin. All nine had pleaded not guilty but changed their pleas to guilty after they were confronted with documents found by Israel after the Six-Day War in the Jordanian Divisional Headquarters for the west bank area. The records showed that the men were among those who had supplied information to the Jordanian intelligence.
Two youths from the Druze village of Aussafiva, near Haifa, have been sentenced to seven years imprisonment today, after they were found guilty on espionage charges. They had been accused of contact with the Egyptian Intelligence.
Their activities aroused great indignation among the villagers of Aussafiva, as the Druze community has been fighting on the side of Israel since the 1948 War of Liberation, Many of its members are still in the Israeli army and in border police units.
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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.