[A-List] Nuke Spooks: Egypt claims nuclear espionage by Israel

["Leigh Meyers" <the.buffalo.in.the.midst@xxxxxxxxx>]

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7/04/2007  	 		
Israel dismisses Egypt's claims of nuclear espionage
By Haaretz Service and Agencies
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/849516.html

Israel on Tuesday rejected charges that it had recruited a nuclear
engineer at the Egyptian Atomic Energy Agency to spy on the country's
atomic program.

The engineer has been charged with spying for Israel, Egyptian
officials said, saying that he had received software to hack into the
Agency's computers.

The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem dismissed the accusations, Army
Radio reported, saying that this was not the first time that Egypt had
made such claims.

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"To Israel's sorrow, we hear from time to time stories like this from
Cairo, and it ultimately becomes clear that they are preposterous and
baseless," the radio quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying.

The suspect was identified as 35-year-old Mohammed Sayed Saber Ali,
who works at the Inshas reactor. State security prosecutor Hisham
Badawi said that two foreigners, one Japanese and one Irish, were
wanted in connection with the case but remained at large.

Badawi said Ali stole important documents from the Atomic Energy
Agency and passed them on to agents of Israel's Mossad intelligence
service in return for $17,000. Ali first met the two foreigners in
Hong Kong between 2004 and 2006, Badawi said.

A statement by the Egyptian government named the Irishman as Brian
Peter and the Japanese man as Shiro Izo. They told Ali at one meeting
in Hong Kong that they wanted him to work for their company from
inside the Atomic Energy Agency, it said.

"The first accused [Ali] said that he understood from the course of
this meeting that the company referred to was no more than a front for
the activity of Israeli intelligence," it said.

At a later meeting in Hong Kong in December 2006, Ali gave Peter
documents containing secret information about the Atomic Energy Agency
and the nuclear reactor at Inshas, it said.

During his final trip to Hong Kong, in February 2007, Israeli
intelligence gave Ali lie detector tests for two days as a condition
for him receiving computer software for hacking into the Atomic Energy
Agency's computer systems, it added.

Ali graduated from Alexandria University in 1994 with a bachelor's
degree in nuclear engineering and obtained a diploma in nuclear
reactor physics from Cairo University in 1999, Badawi told the news
conference.

He got a job at the Atomic Energy Agency in 1997 and went to the
Israeli embassy in Cairo in May 1999 to ask for a grant to study
nuclear engineering at Tel Aviv University.

The visit aroused the suspicions of Egyptian authorities, who told Ali
not to go to the embassy without informing his superiors at work, the
statement said.

The statement said Ali's contacts were interested in information about
the capability of the Inshas reactor, how many hours it operated, the
type of experiments conducted with it, any technical problems with the
reactor and reasons for them.

They also wanted to know how frequently the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) inspects the reactor, it said.

Egypt has a small research atomic reactor. It has recently announced
plans to develop a nuclear energy program more than 20 years after it
abandoned the idea of building a reactor in the aftermath of the 1986
Chernobyl disaster.

Egyptian Minister of Electricity and Energy Hassan Yunis said this
year that his country could have an operational nuclear power plant
within 10 years. The plan is to build a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power
plant at Al-Dabaa on the Mediterranean coast.

This is the second spy scandal that has been exposed in the past two
years. Previously, Mohammed el-Attar, 30, a former student at the
Islamic Al-Azhar university in Cairo, was arrested on January 1, 2007
as he returned from abroad to visit his family in Egypt.

According to prosecutors, el-Attar confessed to spying for Israel and
gave a detailed account of his role in collecting information about
Egyptians and Arabs living in Turkey and Canada in return for money.

He also received instructions from the three Israelis, said to be
intelligence officers, to recruit Christian Egyptian immigrants in
Canada using money and sex.

The alleged confession claimed el-Attar fled Egypt in 2001 and sought
asylum with the UN refugee agency offices in Turkey after he was
sentenced to three years in prison for bank fraud.

The confession also alleged that el-Attar converted to Christianity in
Istanbul and was allegedly sent to Canada, where he delivered more
reports about Christian Egyptians.

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