Spy Ring ’caused Damage to Israel’s Security,’ Police Inspector Discloses

The Arab-Jewish Syrian-directed spy ring “caused damage to Israel’s security,” but “unfortunately I cannot elaborate,” Police Inspector General Shaul Rosolio told newsmen. He was the first top Israeli official to disclose some details of the investigation. He confirmed reports that a Jewish member of the ring, Ehud Adiv, who had visited Damascus several times, had also visited Cairo enroute to the Syrian capital.

Rosolio noted that Adiv did not report to Egyptian intelligence and that there was no Syrian-Egyptian cooperation in the operation of the spy ring. He confirmed indirectly that the four Jewish detainees were cooperating with investigators, but that “only at the end will we know if they told us the truth.” He stated that the discovery of Jewish participation in an anti-Israel sabotage effort had shocked him deeply.

The affairs is still receiving extensive press coverage, the focus of which is on the Jewish participants in the espionage and sabotage ring. Adiv has been nick-named “Udi the Red” because of his alleged friendship with Danny Cohen-Bendit, the French-Jewish revolutionary student leader who visited Israel in 1968.

Adiv’s birthplace, Kibbutz Gan Shmuel of the Hashomer Hatzair movement, has become a target of public hostility much to the chagrin of the kibbutzniks who were stunned by Adiv’s defection and who point out that the children of the kibbutz receive a classic Zionist education and upbringing. Adiv hasn’t lived at Gan Shmuel for the last three years. But public feelings are running high. One bus driver refused to stop at the kibbutz gates to discharge passengers.

Meanwhile, police investigators who have taken the suspects to their former habitats in a reconstruction of the spy ring’s activities, have been told by the Arab Christian ring leader, Daoud Turki, that the group’s aim was to bring about a political revolution in Israel and install an Arab-Jewish revolutionary regime.