North Sinai Criminal Court postponed last week until 5 March a case charging three Egyptians and six Israelis with spying on behalf of Israel. Judge Said Hashem deferred the case to next month because of the absence of the defendants, which was justified by a security official for security reasons. The three alleged Egyptian spies — Owda Ibrahim, 31, Salama Abujrad, 40, and Mohamed Abu Eyada, 23 — are from Rafah in North Sinai, on the border with the Palestinian Gaza Strip. Ibrahim and Abujrad were arrested in 2013 following months of surveillance. The six Israelis, who are on the run, include four officers from the Israeli Military Intelligence, or Aman, while the two others are Israeli citizens of Arab origin. The State Security Prosecution, which deals with cases involving national security and terrorism, earlier referred the case to North Sinai Criminal Court accusing the nine defendants of “espionage and providing a foreign entity with information concerning national security”. Al-Ahram Weekly, however, learned that the case is going to be referred to the court of the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, due to security reasons. The file is known as the “Ovadia” case, named after Aman officer Danny Ovadia, the one leading the alleged spy cell who is also known as “Abu Akram”. Aaron Danoun and David Yacoub, Sholom Sofer are the three other Aman officers, alongside Ovadia, are being tried in absentia in the case. Spokesman for Israel's foreign ministry Palmor Yigal said that Israel is “not aware of these allegations” describing them as “obviously preposterous, unlikely and totally unfounded”. Though Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, the first Arab country to have done so, news about arresting spies in Egypt working for the Mossad, Israeli intelligence, appears frequently. However, the name of the military intelligence agency, “Aman” is not as familiar as Mossad in Egypt. Asking Major General Fouad Allam, a security expert and former deputy head of the National Security Apparatus, about Aman's appearance in the case and not Mossad, he replied: “The target of spying in this case is the Egyptian army, regarding its deployment, the quality of its arming, in addition to the extent of its development and generally the security situation in Sinai, which all lie within the interest of Aman rather than the Mossad, which is responsible for more civil issues like evaluating the stability of regimes and engaging in economic, industrial, technological or even sociable fields.” According to an Egyptian intelligence report, published by the daily Al-Youm Al-Sabei and which will be used as evidence in the trial, the four Israeli officers recruited the main suspect, Ibrahim, through his father-in-law Salem Abu Abdullah, a descendant of the Sinai tribe Al-Azazma, who fled to Israel years ago before being sentenced to death in an espionage case in Egypt in 1990. From 2007 to 2012, Abujrad allegedly worked in this espionage network alone before meeting Ibrahim in September 2012. In 2003, Abujrad joined the Takfir and Hijra group, leading to his detention for 17 days in 2004. He was then put under security surveillance. Abujrad fled to live with his sister in Al-Joura village in the Sinai, where he met with a group of friends who decided to work in Israel together in January 2005. However, he returned to Egypt at the end of 2005 because of his mother's threats to his friends, after being distressed by his absence, that she would report their implication in smuggling weapons, drugs, and African immigrants through tunnels along the Sinai border. Following his return, due to his deteriorated economic condition, Abu Eyada helped Abujrad to work with the Israeli intelligence, Mossad, after contacting Abu Eyada's relative, Omar Harb, who was sentenced to death alongside Abu Abdullah in 1990. The duo Abu Abdullah and Harb have been implicated in espionage operations for recruiting Bedouin youth and presenting them to the Israeli intelligence after enticing them with fast, profitable gains. In 2008 and 2009, Abujrad gave the Israeli intelligence critical information on the stationing of Egyptian armed forces personnel in Rafah and Sinai and on the headquarters of security services and intelligence in Arish and Rafah. He also provided his Israeli partners with detailed information on people working in arms trafficking, factories, and Arish Stadium. In September 2012, Abujrad and Ibrahim started to collaborate and together, crossed the border into Israel twice, and spent four days with the Israeli military intelligence in Beersheba, where they allegedly met with the intelligence officers Ovadia, Danoun, and Yacoub. A month later, the Egyptian intelligence received information that Abujrad and Ibrahim were seen in October 2012 with Danoun and Yacoub in the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Since then, the two men were put under close surveillance. The two spies provided detailed reports on security conditions in Sinai, according to the report. In time, their work expanded to include the neighbouring Ismailia governorate and Sharqia governorate, where they took pictures and filmed videos of missiles — which were ready to be smuggled to the Gaza Strip to be sold to arm dealers — after such footage as requested by the Israeli intelligence. “The goal of the arrested members of the spy cell was to locate army ambushes in the Sinai and to monitor the movements of police and military forces as well as the arm smugglers using tunnels connecting the Gaza Strip and Sinai,” said Sameh Seif Al-Yazal, a former intelligence officer and currently chairman Al-Gomhuriya Centre for Strategic Studies. “The defendants provided the Israeli military intelligence ‘Aman' with information about the armed patrols and ambushes in the Sinai,” Al-Yazal added, pointing out that the defendants were provided by Israeli intelligence with mobile SIM-cards connected to satellites, so as to help them monitor the movements of the army in addition to ships in the Suez Canal. Egyptian security arrested Ibrahim in April 2013, while Abujrad was located and arrested in a security crackdown shortly thereafter, ending his alleged six-year stint spying for Israel. Abujrad's phone had 115 Israeli numbers of intelligence officers, human traffickers, arms and drug smugglers, and wanted spies. The members of the espionage cell, according to the report, dealt with many individuals in various tribes in Sinai — including Al-Sawarka and Al-Tiyaha — whether for receiving money sent by Aman officers or even to help them smuggle through the border. Allam told the Weekly that it is because Sinai was occupied by Israel for long years, during which the Israeli security forces penetrated the Egyptian peninsula and recruited many spies who facilitated the recruitment of others later. Last June, nine were accused of passing sensitive information to Israel. They were tried in absentia. In October 2011, Israel freed 25 Egyptians in exchange for the release of US-Israeli Ilan Grapel, who had been held in Cairo for four months on spying charges. Meanwhile, Sinai, famed as a leading tourist destination given its nature, dazzling coral reefs and biblical history, is witnessing increasing volatility in post-revolution Egypt. Attacks targeting police stations, military checkpoints and other government establishments have soared since the ouster of Mohamed Morsi in July. Dozens of security forces have been killed in these attacks. In response, the army launched an “anti-terrorism” operation in Sinai to combat growing militancy, killing dozens of militants, arresting hundreds and targeting tunnels in Sinai, aiming at creating “a buffer zone securing 500 metres to one kilometre along the border.” Army Spokesman Colonel Ahmed Ali said a month ago that since August, the army had “eliminated 184 terrorists and radicals” in North Sinai in addition to wounding 203 others with 835 arrested. Amid such instability, a statement released last month by Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Danny Danon regarding security conditions in Sinai was strongly denounced by the Egyptian foreign ministry. Danon said that his country “expects Egypt to pay attention to the security situation on its territory,” and that “Israel will find and punish anyone who's planning to carry out attacks against it, even if they were in the territory of another country”. Days later, on 23 January, the Al-Qaeda inspired group Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis claimed responsibility for a rocket attack on the Israeli resort town of Eilat. The group issued a statement accusing the Egyptian government of “protecting the safety of Israel”. On whether there is a direct or even indirect link between what is happening on the ground in Sinai with Israel in general, or espionage cells being repeatedly uncovered in particular, Allam believes there is a link. “From my own perspective, I believe that there is an indirect link between Israel on one side and radical militant groups in Sinai on the other. As long as Israel was able to break through and recruit members of the Palestinian Hamas movement, and due to the fact that the radical Islamist militant groups in Sinai are considered more or less an extension of Hamas, they are also penetrated by Israeli intelligence,” Allam said. Mohamed Rashad, former undersecretary of Egypt's General Intelligence, similarly confirmed to Al-Dostour daily in interview that in addition to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Israeli Mossad is also linked directly or indirectly with most of the terrorist organisations that perform terrorist operations in Egypt — particularly in Sinai. Prosecutors and police accuse the Muslim Brotherhood, from which Morsi hails, of having links with militants in Sinai. Many attribute the increase in militancy in the Sinai Peninsula to the persistent economic and political marginalisation of its inhabitants. “The government should wake up and begin a comprehensive and real industrial, social and educational development drive in Sinai, in conjunction with raising public awareness and boosting the sense of belonging to the homeland, as it is the only way to purge and fortify Sinai,” Allam said.
