Australia: dead Israeli prisoner was Australian

Canberra, Feb 13 (AP) An Australian-Israeli citizen was found hanged in an Israeli prison cell in late 2010 after being secretly held for several months, and was suspected of links to Israel's Mossad espionage agency, the Australian government and national broadcaster said. The Australian Broadcasting Corp. Report yesterday sought to lift the veil of secrecy from a case that Israel has long kept under wraps. In June 2010, the Israeli news site Ynet briefly reported on the existence of a prisoner identified only as Prisoner X whose crimes were unknown, but that report was removed from the site shortly after it was posted. Ynet then reported on Dec. 27, 2010 that a prisoner had committed suicide while in solitary confinement two weeks earlier. That report, which said jailers took him down from his noose and unsuccessfully tried to revive him, was also quickly removed. Israel's military censor has the authority to block or even delete reports deemed threatening to national security. The censor's office declined comment. According to the ABC report, the man's name was Ben Zygier, an Australian immigrant to Israel who, it claimed, had worked for the Mossad. It claimed his incarceration was top secret, but did not say why he had been arrested. It said he hanged himself in a cell that had been specially designed for Yigal Amir, the Jewish ultranationalist who assassinated then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed in a statement Wednesday that the prisoner was an Australian citizen. "The Australian Embassy in Tel Aviv was unaware of this Australian's detention until his death was reported by his family, who requested repatriation of his remains," the statement said. "The family has not asked for any further representations." The department would not comment on what it described as the ABC's "speculation" on Zygier's links to Mossad. The department said it cannot comment on intelligence matters, "alleged or actual." Foreign Minister Bob Carr said the concept of Australians working for Mossad was troubling. But Zygier's family would need to contact him before he would take the matter further with Israel. "Australians should not be working, performing intelligence gathering functions for a foreign government using their passport," Carr told ABC. "They would have breached, I would guess, half-a-dozen laws by doing that," he added. (AP) IRH 02130738 NNNN