“This spy, whose identity will be announced after the verdict is approved, has been sentenced to death,” Jafari-Dolatabadi said on Sunday.
“This person who worked as a spy for Israel has been sentenced to death. The sentence will be carried out after judicial and executive processes,” he added.
He went on to say that other cases of espionage were being investigated by the prosecutor’s office, IRNA reported.
In October, Iran arrested seven individuals, who had collaborated with Israeli intelligence services, on charges of espionage.
Iranian officials say one of the spies was involved in counterrevolutionary activities, and one was working on issues pertaining to the country’s domestic affairs.
Five others were arrested for infiltrating the country’s administrative institutions and passing classified data to foreign countries.
These spies supplied the enemy with information on Iran’s judiciary, military and space agencies, among other things, prior to their arrest.
Israel runs spy cells in many countries around the world. It is also the only Washington ally to openly spy on the United States.
In recent years many Tel Aviv-linked individual have been arrested in countries like Egypt, Lebanon and Syria on espionage charges.
US-born Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life on charges of spying for Tel Aviv 25 years ago, and his case has been a source of tension between the United States and Israel.
More than 100 people have been arrested in Lebanon on suspicion of spying for Israel since April 2009. Among them are telecom employees, members of the security forces and active duty troops.
GULFPORT, Miss. —Â
The planned overthrow of the U.S. government ended rather prosaically this fall, with a giant pile of mashed-up trucks in a muddy scrap yard a mile or so off the Interstate.
The crew at Alter Metal Recycling has been piling up the old trucks since summer and sending them to Alabama, for melting down and reincarnation as everything from cars to washers and dryers.
In certain circles in the mid-1990s, rumors sprouted among those inclined to keep an eye out for black helicopters. To them, the presence of 700 military-looking trucks bearing Soviet-bloc markings in a weed-strewn lot north of Gulfport was clear proof of a U.N. plan to take over the United States.
The specific outlines of such a plot were rather vague. But conspiracy-cult radio shows and right-wing fringe newsletters delivered somber reports about the vehicles, speaking of armored tanks, secret roads and the role of the vehicles in the establishment of a New World Order.
But the real tale behind the trucks, as is often the case, turns out to be more interesting than the conspiracy.
Charles Chawafaty, an Egyptian businessman, and Fred Koval, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, met in a Saudi Arabian prison.
Koval, now 88, had moved to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1979 to teach electronics at a school run by the Lockheed Corp. In 1981, Koval spent 4 1/2 months in a Saudi prison. While there, he said, he met Chawafaty.
In 1993, Chawafaty’s company, Agrinvest International, which is based in Phoenix, bought roughly 1,000 former Soviet bloc vehicles that had been demilitarized and auctioned. Some were stored in Britain, but most made their way to an 18-acre lot north of Gulfport that Koval had found. Chawafaty said the plan was to retrofit the vehicles and sell them to the United Nations for humanitarian missions.
All of this set off the conspiracy theories. “But none of it attracted buyers,” Koval said.
In the end, the vehicles mostly sat unwanted in the lot. The conspiracy theories dwindled, as did customs officials’ visits.
The rusting accelerated after Hurricane Katrina. For various reasons, including the expiration of a trade license and the fact that nobody was interested in rust-covered trucks, Chawafaty decided to scrap them.
Koval laughed about the whole episode, which produced little more than proof that most business schemes, like most conspiracy theories, end up on the ash heap of history.
Hard on the heels of the WikiLeaks scandal comes yet another spy dispute, this time between Russia and Britain. London has expelled a Russian diplomat for what Foreign Secretary William Hague called overstepping the unwritten rules of espionage and Russia has responded tit-for-tat by sending a Brit home.
This is hardly a scandal – each side pocketed one ball in this game of diplomatic billiards, so it’s a draw. And the game was played with traditional, impersonal diplomatic politeness. The Russian Embassy was told on December 10 that the official in question must leave within the week, which he did. On December 16, the Russian Embassy replied in kind, and a British diplomat was sent packing, to return to his own snowbound homeland.
London clearly expected a retaliatory gesture. Foreign Secretary Hague announced the results of this billiard game only on December 21, after the British diplomat had been expelled from Russia. He described Russia’s response as groundless and expressed hope for the normalization of relations. Everything was comically routine.
Where is the good old Cold War where you need it? Back then, the ramifications of this dispute would have lasted for weeks.
Hands off the secret source
Diplomats are expelled for a variety of reasons. It’s not exactly difficult to identify those officials that work for intelligence agencies. Sometimes it is a purely political move. In this case, British newspapers reported that the expelled Russian diplomat had overstepped the mark, crossing the line between what is regarded acceptable and unacceptable behavior for an intelligence officer. The collection of any information of interest to intelligence agencies is considered acceptable behavior.
All spies working undercover as diplomats do roughly the same job as regular diplomats and journalists in every country. They gather information. The only difference is that they put it into different baskets and it is processed differently. That’s it. There is nothing sinister about it.
The Brits claim that the Russian diplomat was discovered approaching an individual rather than stealing information or entering sensitive buildings. He was asked to leave this secret source alone. These things happen.
One-off expulsions never produce any meaningful results, but they are inevitable when the rules of the game are broken. In this case, the expulsion is a message to the other side to “cool off.” Russia’s retaliation carries the same message.
The case of Zatuliveter
This would have been an entirely routine incident had it not been for the intrigue surrounding the case of Katia Zatuliveter. Foreign Secretary Hague said that the Russian diplomat’s expulsion was entirely unconnected with the allegations leveled against Zatuliveter. The 25 year-old Russian had studied in Britain before landing a job in 2008 as a research assistant for Mike Hancock, Liberal Democrat MP for Portsmouth South. Hancock chaired the All-Party Group on Russia in the House of Commons, where his unabashed affection for the country certainly raised some eyebrows. He was ultimately removed from that post, but continues to sit on the defense select committee.
Zatuliveter acted as the Russia group’s secretary and accompanied Hancock on his trips to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg, where the MP also serves. Hancock has been accused of hiring a Russian agent who supplied sensitive information from the House of Commons and PACE directly to the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency. Zatuliveter was arrested and held in an immigration center outside London before the UK Home Office announced that she was to be deported.
Hancock’s colleagues in the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in PACE – Matyas Eorsi (Hungary) and Serhiy Holovaty (Ukraine) – told newspapers that they had long suspected Hancock. They said he had always invited young, leggy Russian girls to the group’s secret meetings at L’Eveil des Sans, an upscale restaurant in Strasbourg. His glamorous but dubious companions also accompanied him at secret discussions regarding Europe’s future.
Portsmouth, which Hancock represents in Parliament, is a port city. His father and grandfather were sailors. And he gave a salty response worthy of a sailor to the accusations, calling them “absolute rubbish.” He said that the defense committee’s papers had been leaked to the press in the past and that he had never seen any information in them that was not available from open sources. He also said that he took not only Russian but also Bulgarian and Romanian girls to sessions in Strasbourg, adding: “Who the hell would be interested in what the Lib Dem delegation was doing and what we were thinking? It’s absolute nonsense.”
Zatuliveter declared that she is no Anna Chapman. She hired a lawyer and will now appeal what she considers to be her illegal deportation in court. The Home Office is no doubt unhappy that it has been ensnared in this case.
Le Carre’s verdict
If the spy scandals during the Cold War had been this routine, the world would have been deprived of great spy novelists like Ian Fleming or John Le Carre. There would have been no James Bond or George Smiley. Sadly, this is the direction we seem to be moving in; this is exactly what these masters of the spy novel predicted after the recent spy swaps and expulsions.
When the Americans arrested 11 Russian sleeper agents, including the darling of the British press Anna Chapman (aka Agent 90-60-90), David John Moore Cornwell (aka John Le Carre) wrote an article for the Guardian about the affair. Not only is Le Carre an outstanding spy novelist, he also served with the British intelligence services MI5 and MI6. So, out of respect for the man, I’ll permit myself a lengthy quote:Â
“Once upon a time spies had motives. There was capitalism and there was communism. You could choose. And all right, there was the money and the sex and the blackmail, and needing to get your own back on your superiors by betraying them when you’d been passed over for promotion, and there was the God-feeling, and playing the world’s game, and the whole familiar repertoire of noble and grubby motives, but in the end you either spied for a cause or against it.
“But what in heaven’s name was their cause? Who did they think they were protecting in their distorted, programmed little minds as they tried and tried again, unsuccessfully, to slither up the slippery pole of western society? What was there to choose between Mother Russia and Mother America, two huge continents out of control drowning together in the oily waters of capitalism? Was it really only the name on the lifebelt that made the difference? Mother Russia right or wrong?”
The world is like a tiny, cramped communal apartment, and naturally everyone wants to know what everyone else is doing. But peeping through the keyhole is not as exciting as breaking down the door. Espionage has become boring.
Once there was an emergency brake on the train of diplomacy, and when it was pulled, the train would come to a screeching, abrupt halt. In 1971, the Brits expelled 105 Soviet diplomats in Operation Foot. In 1985, after Oleg Gordievsky defected to London, the UK expelled almost all the KGB agents operating there. Under Ronald Reagan in 1986, the Americans asked 80 Soviet diplomats to leave. In 2001, they expelled another six, and then 45 more.
Those were the days. Now that emergency brake is no longer used. The train makes regular stops. Four Russians and one American get off at the next stop, some Brits get off at the next one.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said it would be “politically impossible” for Britain to extradite him to the United States for espionage.
Mr Assange told the Guardian newspaper there was a “high chance” he would be killed if he was jailed in America.
US authorities are thought to be considering whether they could extradite him on espionage charges.
He is currently on bail facing extradition proceedings to Sweden on sexual assault allegations.
Mr Assange denies the claims and says the case is politically motivated.
His Wikileaks website has published tens of thousands of leaked US diplomatic cables.
Mr Assange said strong public support for him in the UK would make it difficult for the British to hand him over to the Americans.
“It’s all a matter of politics. We can presume there will be an attempt to influence UK political opinion, and to influence the perception of our standing as a moral actor,” he said.
“Legally the UK has the right to not extradite for political crimes. Espionage is the classic case of political crimes. It is at the discretion of the UK government as to whether to apply to that exception.”
He also said that if was extradited to the US, there was a “high chance” of him being killed “Jack Ruby-style”.
This is a reference to the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald before he was brought to trial for the murder of President John F Kennedy.
The Mclean-based hotel giant has settled a lawsuit in which rival Starwood Hotels Resorts accused Hilton of using stolen trade secrets to launch a niche brand called Denizen Hotels and advance other Hilton lines such as its Waldorf Astoria Collection.
The settlement, disclosed in a federal court filing Wednesday, calls for the appointment of an independent monitor to make sure Hilton doesn’t take advantage of the documents allegedly purloined from Starwood.
For just over two years, the settlement also prohibits Hilton from creating any hotel brand that would compete “in the lifestyle hotel or branded boutique space.”
There was more to the settlement, but some terms were kept confidential, Hilton said.
“Hilton Worldwide regrets the circumstances surrounding the dispute . . . and is pleased to bring an end to this prolonged litigation,” Hilton chief executive Christopher J. Nassetta said in a news release. Under the settlement, Hilton denied Starwood’s allegations.
The Justice Department previously revealed that it was conducting a criminal probe, and the document filed in court Wednesday said a grand jury is still investigating.
Starwood operates hotels under brand names that include St. Regis, W Hotels, Westin, and Sheraton. The company’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleged a far-reaching effort by Hilton to exploit internal Starwood documents obtained when Hilton hired executives away from Starwood.
Hilton’s “senior management personally induced and used Starwood employees to serve as corporate spies . . . to provide Hilton with real-time information about Starwood’s confidential development plans,” the lawsuit said.
The litigation began after Hilton informed Starwood in February 2009 that it had found confidential Starwood information at Hilton and in the homes of Hilton employees. Hilton turned over to Starwood thousands of Starwood documents and computer files.
Starwood alleged that Nassetta was told of the theft months earlier and that, in November 2008, an executive whistleblower within Hilton sent Nassetta a letter describing the wrongdoing.
Hilton introduced its Denizen brand in March 2009, and Starwood alleged the concept was developed using Starwood’s internal documents.
