The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported on Tuesday that a man referred to in Israel as âPrisoner X,â who was jailed and died under mysterious circumstances in 2010, might have been an Australian-born Israeli who worked for Israelâs secret service, the Mossad.
According to the ABC, an unnamed source âwith connections to Israelâs security establishmentâ claimed that the prisoner â" whose detention and suicide at the high-security Ayalon Prison outside Tel Aviv was briefly reported on an Israeli news site in December 2010 despite a gag order â" was named Ben Alon. That same month, the network reported, a man from suburban Melbourne, Ben Zygier, who had emigrated to Israel 12 years ago and changed his name to Ben Alon, died in Israel.
Although the Australian state broadcaster published video and a complete transcriptof the 28-minute report online, Israeli news sites removed articles describing the ABC investigation after editors were summoned to an emergency meeting by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuâs office, Reuters reported.
As the Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf explained in a post for the Tel Aviv news blog +972, reporters in Israel! have been trying to skirt the gag order for more than two years. On Tuesday, he reported:
The Israeli media published short stories based on the Australian piece this morning. Usually, the Israeli military censor allows Hebrew stories on secret issues if they are based on foreign sources. The assumption is that the information has already been made available, so there is little point in keeping it secret. Around noon the stories on the dead prisoner disappeared from the Haaretz, Globes and Walla sites.
An urgent meeting with the editors of the Israeli papers was later called by the Prime Ministerâs Office. The so-called âeditorsâ committeeâ is an informal Israeli institution in which newspapers editors were given access o secret information in exchange for refraining from publishing it. According to a report in Haaretz, the meeting was called regarding an affair which âseverely embarrassesâ a government institution or person.
Trevor Bormann, the ABC journalist who led the investigation broadcast Tuesday on the networkâs current affairs program âForeign Correspondent,â explained what Israeli journalists are up against in his report:
Foreign Correspondent has obtained details of a gag order issued in late June 2010 under the case name âIsrael versus John Doe.â In it, Judge Hila Gerstl, of the Petach Tikva District Court bans any public mention or hint of Prisoner X, Mr X, cell number 15 in `c Prison, the conditions there, or anything about being held in that cell. As an indication of how sensitive th! e issue w! as, the Judge ruled that even mention of the existence of the order was prohibited.
Concerns about censorship, and the reported secret detention of an Israeli citizen who somehow managed to hang himself in a high-security prison, prompted a stream of questions for Israelâs justice minister on Tuesday in the Knesset, Israelâs Parliament, Haaretz reported.
âI cannot answer these questions because the matter does not fall under the authority of the Justice Minister,â the justice minister, Yaakov Neâeman, said. âBut there is no doubt that if true, the matter must be looked into.â
As Mr. Bormann noted in his ABC the report, relations between Israel and several other nations became strained in early 2010 when it emerged that âMossad had used the identities of dual nationals living in Israel, including four Australians,â on forged passports used by suspects in the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai.
During its investigation, Mr. Bormann added, the ABCâs producers lodged a freedom of information request with Australiaâs Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade asking for any documents relating to Ben Zygier, also known as Ben Alon.â In response, he reported:
D.F.A.T. told us there were documents relating to his imprisonment and death but we werenât entitled to see them because their release could have a substantial adverse impact on the proper and efficient conduct of consular operations. But curiously in their response to me D.F.A.T. referred constantly to a Mr. Allen. When I asked for clarification, a department official told me that Ben Zygier, also known as Ben Alon, also carried an Australian passport bearing the name Ben Allen.
Writing on Twitter, Israeli bloggers and journalists have tried to draw atention to the Australian report, sharing a copy of program posted on YouTube and photographs of the man identified as Ben Zygier by the ABC.