CAIRO - Egypt's State Security prosecutors Thursday notified an Egyptian man, suspected of spying for Israel along with two other Israelis, of the bill of indictment in his prison cell and referred the case to the court to set a date for the trial. "An indictment statement was handed to Tareq Abdel Raziq on his crime spying for Israel. The case will be sent to the High Emergency State Security Court next week to set a date for the first hearing," a statement by prosecutors said. It added that the charges included "espionage and endangering the interests of Egypt" and "carrying out activities, which could lead to a breakdown in relations" with Syria and Lebanon. Abdel Raziq, the 37-year-old owner of an import-export business, was arrested in May at Cairo Airport. Two Israeli agents linked to him are on the run and warrants have been issued for their arrests. According to the statement, Abdel Raziq's first contact with Mossad, the Israel spy agency, was in 2007, when he received an e-mail while looking for a job in China. The same year, he met the Israeli agents in Thailand, where he was asked to set up an import-export business back home as a cover for his real work with Mossad, according to investigators. Through the Internet, Abdel Raziq's company looked for Syrian suppliers of olive oil and pastry, allowing him to travel to Syria several times to look for recruits. Following instructions from his two accomplices, during one of his visits he forwarded a sum of money to a Syrian agent of Mossad on behalf of the two accused Israelis. He later set up a website that offered telecommunications jobs in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, with the aim of looking for more potential recruits, the statement said. Minister of Telecommunications and Information Technology Tareq Kamel said, meanwhile, that Egypt's mobile phone networks were protected against any kind of spying. However, he declined to comment on reports that an employee of one of the mobile companies was involved in the case. Meanwhile, Israeli Ambassador in Cairo Itzhak Levanon and his wife left for Tel Aviv without giving any details about the reason for their sudden departure. Levanon and his wife stayed for 40 minutes at Cairo Airport before they boarded an Aal flight to Tel Aviv, a Cairo Airport official said. Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.
