Lawmakers are crafting laws to finish authorities pension funds to former minister Gonen Segev if he's convicted of spying for Iran, Likud MK Amir Ohana mentioned Thursday.
Segev at the moment receives a month-to-month pension of a number of thousand shekels. Ohana instructed Hadashot information that MKs have been shocked to discover that as issues stand, Segev would proceed to obtain the funds even if convicted of severe crimes in opposition to the state.
Segev was charged final month with spying for Iran, giving Israel’s arch-foe delicate details about areas of safety facilities and the nation’s power trade, the Shin Bet safety service revealed.
Ohana mentioned he's now working to move laws that may guarantee the previous power and infrastructure minister not receives the funds if discovered responsible.
Segev was allegedly an energetic agent on the time of his arrest, and had twice been to Iran to meet his handlers.
Ohana identified that there's precedent for an MK to be stripped of his pension. In 2007 Azmi Bishara, the founder of the Arab Israeli political party Balad, resigned from his Knesset place and fled the nation after being investigated by police on suspicion of spying for the Lebanese-based Hezbollah terror group.
Likud MK Amir Ohana on June 28, 2018. (Screen seize: Hadashot information)
Ohana stated that Bishara was stripped of his pension, however the laws enacted to accomplish that was distinctive to his case. Now the Likud MK is making an attempt to draft laws that will even cowl Segev within the occasion he's convicted.
“We all remember the case [of Bishara],” Ohana mentioned. “In the wake of the absurd situation that arose, when the state of Israel continued to pay him a pension even though he had fled from investigations on suspicion he was spying for Hezbollah, a law was created to fit his situation. However it was created specifically for [Bishara’s] case and therefore it does not include cases like that of Gonen Segev. My law will attempt to broaden the parameters so that it will also apply to Segev.”
Segev, a disgraced politician who served time in jail for drug smuggling, was extradited to Israel from Equatorial Guinea.
As said by the Shin Bet, Segev, whose former ministerial obligations included power and infrastructure, has knowingly been involved with Iranian intelligence officers since 2012, making first contact with them at Iran’s embassy in Nigeria.
“Segev gave his operators information about [Israel’s] energy sector, about security locations in Israel, and about buildings and officials in diplomatic and security bodies, and more,” the Shin Bet mentioned in a assertion.
Gonen Segev (L) speaks with then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin throughout a convention in Jerusalem. (Government Press Office)
“Segev even visited Iran twice to meet with his handlers in full knowledge that they were Iranian intelligence operatives,” the safety service mentioned.
The Shin Bet mentioned Segev met along with his Iranian handlers in inns and secure homes around the globe and used a particular encrypted system to ship them messages in secret.
He was accused of making contact with Israeli figures in safety, protection, and diplomacy so as to mine them for data to ship to Iran.
As said by the Shin Bet, he additionally tried to make direct connections between his Israeli contacts and Iranian handlers, presenting the spies as businesspeople.
In mid-May, Segev traveled from Nigeria to Equatorial Guinea the place he was arrested by native police and despatched again to Israel, the intelligence company mentioned.
As anyone who sat in authorities conferences and headed ministries coping with power and nationwide infrastructure, Segev would have had entry to delicate materials throughout his time as a politician. Given that materials relating to the case was not launched in full, it's not clear what harm he might have triggered to Israeli safety.
The former politician had been dwelling overseas since his launch from jail after he was discovered responsible of drug smuggling in 2006.