A former Israeli government minister, once imprisoned for trying to smuggle drugs, is back behind bars after being charged with spying for archenemy Iran, the country’s internal security agency said on Monday.
The Shin Bet said Gonen Segev was extradited from Guinea and arrested upon arrival in Israel last month on suspicion of “committing offenses of assisting the enemy in war and spying against the state of Israel.”
It said Segev, a former energy minister, acted as an agent for Iranian intelligence and relayed information “connected to the energy market and security sites in Israel, including buildings and officials in political and security organizations.”
Segev, who served in the Cabinet under former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in the mid-1990s, was arrested in 2004 for attempting to smuggle 32,000 Ecstasy tablets from the Netherlands to Israel using an expired diplomatic passport. Segev, a former doctor whose medical license was revoked, was released from prison in 2007 and had been living in Africa in recent years.
Segev met with his operators twice in Iran, and also met with Iranian agents in hotels and apartments around the world, the Shin Bet said, adding that Segev was given a “secret communications system to encrypt messages” with his operators.
It is unclear what motivated Segev, whether it was out of monetary or idealistic reasons. It is also not immediately known how much damage, if any, he caused Israel.
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