Former Israeli minister indicted for spying for Iran

Gonen Segev Photo: Koby Cantor
Gonen Segev Photo: Koby Cantor

Gonen Segev is suspected of giving information about defense sites in Israel to his Iranian handlers.

The court today removed a gag order on the Israel Security Agency's (ISA) arrest last month of former minister Gonen Segev on suspicion of aiding an enemy in wartime and espionage against Israel.

Following an investigation, the Jerusalem District State Attorney (criminal) filed an indictment on June 15 for these offenses and many offenses of giving information to an enemy. The indictment was authorized by the Attorney General and the State Attorney.

Segev, who has lived in Nigeria in recent years, traveled to Equatorial Guinea in May 2018. He was transferred to Israel at the request of Israel Police after Equatorial Guinea refused him entry because of his criminal record.

Segev was arrested for questioning by the ISA and the police immediately upon arrival in Israel, after information was gathered giving rise to suspicion that Segev was in contact with Iranian intelligence agencies and was helping them in their activity against Israel.

The investigation by ISA and the police led to a suspicion that Segev had been recruited and had acted as an agent of Iranian intelligence. The investigation revealed that in 2012 contact had been made between Segev and parties at the Iranian embassy in Nigeria, and he later also traveled twice to Iran for meetings with his operators, whose identity as intelligence agents was clear to him.

The investigation discovered that Segev had met with his Iranian operators all over the world in hotels and apartments believed to have been used for covert Iranian activity. Segev was given a secret communications system to encode the messages between him and his operators.

The investigation also revealed that Segev had given his operators information about the energy sector, defense sites in Israel, buildings, officeholders in state and defense agencies, and other matters.

In order to carry out the missions assigned to him by his Iranian operators, Segev made contact with Israeli citizens involved in Israel's security, defense, and foreign relations. Segev put some of these Israeli citizens in contact with the Iranian intelligence agencies, while trying to fool them by presenting the Iranians as innocent businesspeople.

At the request of ISA and the Israeli police, the court allowed the publication of these particulars, while other particulars about the affair remain under a gag order.

Segev's legal representatives, Adv. Eli Zohar and Adv. Moshe Mazor from the Goldfarb Seligman & Co. law firm, stated in response, "We have been advising Mr. Segev since he arrived in Israel a month ago. An indictment was recently filed. Its particulars are mostly confidential at the state's request. Already at this initial stage, it can be said that the permitted report portrays matters with excessive severity, even though the indictment, whose full particulars are still confidential, paints a different picture."

Gonen, 62, a former doctor, was Minister of Energy and Infrastructure representing the Tzomet Party (headed by former minister Rafael Eitan (Raful)) in 1995-1996. He left no major political mark because his criminal activity in subsequent years overshadowed everything.

In 2004, after having been convicted of credit card fraud (debit card), he was arrested on his return from Amsterdam on suspicion of smuggling the drug ecstasy into Israel. He was also accused of forging a diplomatic passport and drug smuggling and served a five-year term following a plea bargain. He did not serve his full term; his sentence was shortened by a third for good behavior.

Segev's license to practice medicine was invalidated following his conviction for drug smuggling. He tried to appeal this ruling and asked Minister of Health Yaakov Litzman to restore his license, but Litzman refused.

Segev's life story amazed many people in Israel already during his political career. He began his military service in a pilot's course, then switch to an elite unit. He was demobilized with the rank of captain, studied medicine at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and was elected to the 13th Knesset in 1992.

Many regarded Rafael Eitan as a man of principle and value, and it was assumed that anyone that he recruited was up to the same high standard of reserve IDF officers. During Yitzhak Rabin's second term as prime minister and its efforts at making peace with the Palestinians, Eitan preferred to remain in the opposition.

In 1994, following disagreements within Tzomet, Segev, Alex Goldfarb, and Esther Salmovitz left Tzomet and founded a new faction, in return for which Segev was appointed Minister of Energy and Infrastructure in Rabin's government. Their three votes added stability to the coalition and made it possible for Knesset to approve the Oslo Agreement. Segev remained in the government formed by Peres after Rabin's assassination until the 1996 elections, in which Netanyahu defeated Shimon Peres.

In the early years following his retirement from politics, Segev worked as an advisor in the Eisenberg group for Israel Chemicals (TASE: ICL: NYSE: ICL) and Oil Refineries Ltd. (TASE:ORL), even though shortly before that as Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, he was responsible for regulating the company.

According to the initial reports, the information about his connections with the Iranians appears unprecedented. There is no record of any previous Israeli minister who conducted such an extensive and prolonged relationship with an enemy of the state. Segev may go down in history for one of the gravest espionage indictments ever filed in Israel.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 18, 2018

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2018

Gonen Segev Photo: Koby Cantor
Gonen Segev Photo: Koby Cantor
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