Prisoner X: The Secret

Reporter: Trevor Bormann

Up until 8PM on Tuesday February 12, 2013 the identity of an inmate held in a notorious cell inside Israel’s Ayalon Prison was known to only a very select group of people. But when Foreign Correspondent went to air, the secret was smashed and the world would know that Prisoner X was a Melbourne man named Ben Zygier – a Mossad agent held on unspecified charges who’d somehow managed to kill himself in what was reportedly a purpose-built, suicide-proof cell.

Our story rocked Israel, shocked Australia and reverberated around the world.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a special emergency conference of media leaders at which his Mossad chief urged editors and journalists to leave the story alone and continue to observe a strict suppression order on the case. It didn’t work. The story generated a great deal of coverage in Israel and beyond and our understanding of mystery man Zygier has grown in the months since.

But burning questions persist unanswered.

One is particularly red-hot.

What did Ben Zygier do to warrant such extraordinary treatment?

With Prisoner X: The Secret, reporter Trevor Bormann reveals stunning new detail about the activities of Prisoner X and the devastating consequences of those activities. And with that we’ll get a much clearer understanding of why Mossad and the Israeli Government have been so keen to keep the Prisoner X case out of sight.
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Transcript

BORMANN: It was a story that rocked Israel, shocked Australia and reverberated around the world - the Foreign Correspondent investigation that blew the lid on the identity of a secretly incarcerated man known only as Prisoner X.

EXCERPT FROM PREVIOUS STORY: We can reveal twelve years ago Melbourne man Ben Zygier moved to Israel to start a new life.

BORMANN: Court suppression orders were blown open, governments went into damage control… investigations ordered… spies grilled… reports tabled – the world was captivated.
(CLIPS FROM INTERNATIONAL NEWS PROGRAMS)
But while we now know a lot more about Prisoner X, Australian Ben Zygier, his life and then demise in a super secure prison, vital questions remain unanswered. Why did Israel go to extraordinary lengths to conceal his identity? What was it about what he’d done that is so sensitive?

Tonight, finally some answers as we meet the foreign spy exposed by Zygier and learn more about this super secret deal with Israel, a deal sabotaged and scuttled by this Prisoner X.

RAMI INGRA: “What did he do? I don’t know and I don’t think it’s... I don’t think, as a patriotic Australian I don’t think that you should go into it”.

BORMANN: “Really?”

RAMI INGRA: “Yeah”.
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BORMANN: In Israel they simply call it “the secret”. Three months after Foreign Correspondent revealed the existence and identity of this country’s Prisoner X I’ve returned looking for an answer to the most elusive question of all. What on earth had Australian Mossad operative Ben Zygier done to be facing 22 years in prison for treason?

ALUF BENN: “The major facts of the espionage case are still unknown. It takes a long time until more detail comes out”.

BORMANN: When our original story aired in Australia editors in Israel were summoned to the office of the Prime Minister to be lectured by the head of Mossad. They were warned not to report details of our program. But in the internet age, they realised the futility of their efforts.

ALUF BENN: [Editor in Chief, Haaretz] “Unless it was published in Australia we would live our lives without knowing about the existence of Ben Zygier and his death”.

BORMANN: Originally the Israeli media had only managed to publish scant detail about the case before a suffocating gag order had been imposed, but when our story broke, the court order was eased and local journalists, still under censorship, were able to report more details.

ALUF BENN: “And you have to ask yourself if the main issue here is protecting intelligence secrets or state security or protecting the reputation of the relevant services. So the government never wants any of these stories out. If it was up to them, it would still be a secret – not only Ben Zygier but also the one before that and the one before that and the one before and the next one and the next one after that”.

BORMANN: The Israeli Government didn’t rely on gag orders alone. When our story aired the Prime Minister himself made a passionate appeal from his cabinet room. The subtext of his message – “leave the story alone”.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: “With this combination of maintaining security, and maintaining the law, we will also maintain freedom of expression. However the overexposure of security and intelligence activity could harm, sometimes severely, State security”.

BORMANN: In our ten month investigation we’d pieced together information from a paper trail of reports, death certificates, Freedom of Information material and insider accounts. we could reveal that this so-called nameless man facing unspecified charges in Ayalon Prison was in fact a man from a prominent Melbourne Jewish family. Ben Zygier we discovered kept changing his name and taking out new passports. We also deduced he was a Mossad agent and wondered how it was he’d managed to commit suicide when he was so closely watched. But it always came back to the question of what he was doing there?

WARREN REED: [Former ASIS Officer – February 12] “It has to be something very, very touchy and very immediate otherwise you wouldn’t go to those lengths”.

BILL VAN ESVELD: [Human Rights Watch] “The old saying ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’ if there’s no sunlight we don’t know what happened and very dirty things could have gone on”.

BORMANN: Israel is very good at concealing secrets.

“We still don’t know what this guy did. Do you think we ever will?”

YOSSI MELMAN: [Intelligence Writer] “I believe that eventually we will know, maybe it will take another five or ten years but see when you go to work for the Mossad it’s very risky. And this is the tragedy of the story that he wanted to be Israeli, he loved this country and he ended the way he ended”.

BORMANN: But anyone remotely connected to what Israelis call ‘the establishment’ want the story to simply go away.

RAMI IGRA: [Former Mossad Officer] “I’ll give you a tip Trevor. I think the story has come to an end really. I’m not trying to put you off or anything but it’s the end of the story. There is nothing there to look for”.

BORMANN: But there is a lot more to the story of Ben Zygier. In March of this year a report by German magazine Der Speigel and the Fairfax Press claimed Zygier had given up names of Lebanese informants working for Mossad but the story stopped short of exposing his full transgression.

Tonight we can reveal why the exposure mattered so much to Mossad, the Israeli Government and the Israeli people. It involves his connection to a monumental operation by Mossad that ended in monumental failure - a mission undone by the recklessness of Ben Zygier.

RAMI IGRA: “This guy was a guy who tried to become a hero. This guy talked like he was a hero, tried to play a hero and when he came to the people that make a hero he tried to make himself an asset so they think he’s a hero as well. Whilst trying to make himself an asset, he committed a crime”.

BORMANN: To get a sense of how damaging Ben Zygier’s actions were to the state of Israel you need to understand something revered in this nation of soldiers. Israel’s men and women serve in the knowledge that whatever happens they will always come home, even if they die in action. The repatriation of the fallen is a contract and the state will do just about anything to fulfil its side of the bargain.

A testament to that is that after all of Israel’s wars, there are only six soldiers still missing in action. There are huge rewards for information about them. For thirty years Israel has been trying to retrieve the remains of these men – Zachary Baumel, Yehuda Katz and Svee Feldmann were killed after being captured by Syrian forces during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 in what was to become known as the Battle of Sultan Yacoub.

I’ve come to Lebanon, still in a state of war with its southern neighbour Israel. In 2007, Mossad launched an operation to get back the bones of its three fallen soldiers. It set out to cultivate a man who would become a prized recruit. His name, Ziad Al Homsi – war hero for Lebanon and soon through a persistent and sophisticated global effort aimed at turning him – he’d become Mossad’s man.

Al Homsi has a colourful past as a revolutionary. He served in the Soviet Army but later commanded forces in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley when the Israelis invaded. He knew all the right people from across the Arab world - and in his own military triumphs, Al Homsi killed Israeli soldiers and celebrated. He was perfectly placed to retrieve the bodies of the missing three for the Israelis if he could be won over.

From Beirut I cross the mountains to the Bekaa Valley and towards the Syrian border. The one time mayor of the village of Sardnayel, Ziad Al Homsi, has agreed to see me to tell me his version of the story.

ZIAD AL HOMSI: “The battles started between us and the Jews, the Israelis. Actually it was a strong and fierce battle – air force and all types of weapons were used. Land forces were advanced on all fronts”.

BORMANN: Al Homsi has documented his life in photographs and says he has a photographic memory of his approach by Mossad. It started when a Chinese man came to town and urged him to travel to Beijing for a mayor’s convention. Once in China, he was met by other officials who wanted to start up a clothing export business with him.

ZIAD AL HOMSI: “This is what happened. I went and visited the company’s headquarters and there I was introduced to a Syrian man called George Attar”.

BORMANN: The Syrian man was working for Mossad and soon asked Al Homsi about his war past and in particular, the Battle of Sultan Yacoub.

ZIAD AL HOMSI: “He asked what this battle was about, and I told him. At night he saw me and said he had a brother in Europe who was interested in those missing in wars and his brother told him that from that battle, the bodies of three Jewish soldiers were still missing”.

BORMANN: Al Homsi rightly suspected all along it was Mossad trying to recruit him and he went along with it. Over five trips to Thailand he was introduced to more senior operatives. Eventually, in a bombshell, they told him where the bodies were and made a proposition.

ZIAD AL HOMSI: “After one year of meeting them, at the last meeting they informed me about the location of the corpses, exactly”.

BORMANN: The deal was that Al Homsi would arrange to dig up the remains and then leave them to someone else in the next step of the Mossad operation.

ZIAD AL HOMSI: “I had to find a way, to get the bodies and keep them. However, regarding the second phase they didn’t say anything and said they’d talk about it later”.

BORMANN: But before the remains could be exhumed, the operation was exposed. Someone had told Lebanese intelligence sources that Ziad Al Homsi was an informer for Mossad.

SALWA AL HOMSI: “When my dad was taken from home, three in the morning, we didn’t know why. We opened the TV and suddenly the TV goes like “oh,he’s an Israeli spy... he’s working....” and it was like everything was in a shock for us”.

BORMANN: Al Homsi maintains his meetings with Mossad had the approval of Lebanese Intelligence. They wanted to find out where the bodies were too, so they could trade the remains in a deal for the release of Palestinian prisoners.

SALWA AL HOMSI: “We understand that he didn’t do that to serve the Israelis, we know that he did that to serve his country because he was like a double agent working with the country to get these bodies so the government can do something with them”.

ZIAD AL HOMSI: “I thought I could go into this game on a task with the state, and I would receive a medal from the Republic’s President and I’d become a national hero. For me the result can be tragic because Mossad may kill me. I cannot play with Mossad”.

BORMANN: Regardless of his motives, Mossad’s elaborate operation for the return of its war dead had failed. The Israeli nation was still waiting. Ziad Al Homsi was sentenced to 15 years jail but only served three. The man who gave him up was Ben Zygier and in doing so, unwittingly subverted one of his organisation’s – indeed, one of his country’s - most important operations.

This is how it happened.

In 2008 Zygier became desperate to please his spy masters at Mossad after a mediocre start to his career. He embarked upon a dangerous journey making unauthorised contact with an agent of the Lebanese Hezbollah. Zygier’s ambitious aim on this rogue mission was to recruit the Lebanese man as a double agent. To prove his Mossad’s credentials and to impress, Zygier handed over the name of Ziad Al Homsi to the Lebanese operative. Mossad's man in Lebanon was exposed and Israel’s top secret operation was over. Years on Al Homsi claims he’s not aware of who turned him in.

ZIAD AL HOMSI: “I don’t know any of the names that I’ve heard – neither the Lebanese, nor the Australian. I don’t know any of them”.

BORMANN: “Do you think the Mossad are very smart?”

SALWA AL HOMSI: “Of course they are. They are one of the most intelligent systems in the world. They can go into people’s lives... They are smart people, of course they are smart”.

BORMANN: But even smart organisations make mistakes. Ben Zygier’s recruitment to one of the world’s most feared and revered spy agencies was to be his undoing and a blot on Mossad as well.

YOSSI MELMAN: “I would say in the last forty years there were maybe... maybe three cases that are known, including Ben Zygier, of people who in retrospect shouldn’t be recruited. So you know, three out of.... in forty years, out of hundreds if not thousands of people being recruited to work for the Mossad that’s not a bad ratio at all”.

RAMI IGRA: “There’s a boy, a good Jewish boy, made aliyah, came to this country, tried to serve this country. Thought that he was, he could be more useful and he’s more important to this country than other people thought. There was no malice here. What there was, there was stupidity and there was a crime”.

BORMANN: In the months since our exposé, cracks in the façade of secrecy have allowed the world an illuminating insight into the state of mind of Ben Zygier in his final days. The tragic demise of Ben Zygier has become a question of blame. Security authorities have absolutely no regrets except for the fact that this man died in prison and for that they blame gaol authorities.

But prison officials accuse the security establishment, saying they knew nothing about Ben Zygier when he was delivered to gaol.

This is inside Unit 15 at Ayalon prison and you can see its original inhabitant Amir Yigal the right wing extremist who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. There was another inmate here besides Yigal and Ben Zygier. He met me at my Tel Aviv hotel.

Prisoner A we’ll call him spent three months in this cell and wishes for his identity to be concealed.

PRISONER A: “You can’t know if it’s day or night. You can’t hear nothing, you can’t see nothing”.

BORMANN: “What would it be like spending ten months there?”

PRISONER A: “It’s like putting a bullet in his head. It’s like they bury you alive - the same thing”.

BORMANN: Prisoner A revealed to me the surveillance systems inside the cell. Three CCTV cameras including one in the bathroom that recorded above chest height and hidden microphones, so powerful they could pick up any conversation.

PRISONER A: “They can hear you and they watch you and they see everything, every day and every night because there is night vision also in the camera”.

BORMANN: A judicial report into Ben Zygier’s death reveals the final days of a desperate and broken man. After ten months in a windowless cell in Ayalon Prison, he contemplates a plea bargain that could halve his sentence to ten years. He’s been prescribed tranquilisers and sleeping pills and bears a superficial cut to his wrist. And even though Ben Zygier has told his doctors he’d had two previous suicide attempts in his life, he is still not on suicide watch. He was Prisoner X after all – no one was to know who he was or anything about him.

THE DOCTOR: [Re-enactment] “I remember we spoke English and the whole time he said he needed to speak to someone about the secret”.

BORMANN: Israeli current affairs program Uvda interviewed key people around Ben Zygier in his final days. They spoke without wanting their identities known. We’ve used their quotes in this recreation.

THE DOCTOR: [Re-enactment] “It was obvious that he needed to be in therapy with someone from the organisation where he’d worked. Someone would say to him look, you’ve made a mistake but it will be okay”.

RAMI IGRA: “He was psychiatric full stop - and psychiatric people do all kinds of stupid things. And some of the stupid things that they do are treason”.

THE SOCIAL WORKER: [Re-enactment]“He told me that it was the hardest thing for him that he was not allowed to talk about the secret with anyone and he needed to share it, to talk about what he did and what was going to happen to him. You saw pictures of him in the room with the girls and you see a person who was once complete and now only the eyes remained”.

BORMANN: (OVER RE-ENACTMENT) This is Ben Zygier’s final tumultuous day. Seven hours before his death, Ben Zygier’s wife visits him in gaol. They have a conversation that upsets them both. In the words of the official report, the prisoner lapses into a state of turmoil. Zygier’s wife delivers what is described as a “difficult message” leaving him distraught. After she leaves he writes a note and asks prison guards to take it to his wife but they refuse. He becomes angry and eventually prison guards allow Ben Zygier’s wife back in to calm him down.

Four hours later and alone, the prisoner takes a wet bed sheet to the adjoining bathroom in the cell, switching the light out on the way. The guards aren’t watching him and the surveillance camera in the bathroom is not working anyway.

THE PRISON OFFICIAL: [Re-enactment] “I just got home, I was parking the car and I received a call from the prison. He committed suicide, they told me. It was obvious who it was and all I could manage to say was, ‘oh no’. I tell you I was broken. I simply felt that we failed. His blue eyes went with me everywhere. He really got under my skin”.

RAMI IGRA: “We’re going to celebrate 65 years in Israel and I think that the amounts of stories like you produced are very few, we’re talking about three or four people that’s it. In 65 years not bad”.

BORMANN: “That’s the ones we know about”.

RAMI IGRA: “You know about everyone”.

BORMANN: This is the tragedy of an ardent young Zionist from Melbourne who wanted to serve his people in a way he was not cut out for. It’s the story of a government that wanted to banish him and a prison system that could not keep him alive. Whether the exposure of Ben Zygier’s transgressions amounted to a threat to state security is something that will always be debated in Israel.

Its Prisoner X will never face trial. At least we know he did exist.

Broadcast: 07/05/2013
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2013/s3753735.htm

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