Israel's 'Prisoner X' was Australian Mossad agent, documentary claims

[Magda Hassan]

Prisoner X' doomed by university spy leak

• Blanche Clark Books editor
  
• Herald Sun
  
• February 21, 2014 9:31PM
  

Ben Zygier in an undated picture sourced from Twitter. Source: News Limited


BEN Zygier, the Melbourne-born spy who died in an Israeli jail as "Prisoner X", was arrested after talking about Mossad operations to fellow students at Monash University, a new book says.

One of the students was a businessman with links to Iran, author Rafael Epstein writes in Prisoner X, out next week.
Epstein's research convinced him the Iranian businessman relayed the data back to Iran, and that the Mossad picked up on the leak.
Prisoner X also says ASIO had begun to monitor an unwitting Zygier as he lived in Caulfield with his pregnant wife and child.
Zygier, a dual Australian and Israeli citizen, was recalled to Israel by Mossad, arrested on January 31, 2010, and sent to Ayalon Prison, where he hanged himself on December 15 that year, aged 34.
Last year Israel paid Zygier's family $1.2 million in exchange for agreeing not to pursue a compensation claim.


Epstein says the portrayal of Zygier as a zealot or traitor is wrong, and covers up the lack of transparency and care of the Australian and Israeli governments.
Epstein says the portrayal of Zygier as a zealot or traitor is wrong, and hides a lack of transparency by the Australian and Israeli governments.
Educated at The King David School then Bialik College, and a member of different Zionist youth movements in Melbourne, Zygier first went to Israel in 1993.
He returned to Melbourne to study law at Monash University, deferred after a year, and served in the Israeli Army in 1996 and 1997.
He moved to Israel in 2003 as a lawyer.
Epstein writes that Mossad recruited Zygier, and he gathered intelligence for it while working for various companies in Europe and Israel over five years. He took a break in 2009, and returned to Melbourne with his wife and daughter to study at Monash University.
Epstein says during this time, friends found Zygier's behaviour increasingly erratic.
He says the month before his death, Zygier told the prison psychiatrist that he'd twice tried to kill himself several years previously.
Epstein concludes that the Mossad either hadn't uncovered Zygier's mental fragility or had decided it could be successfully managed.
Epstein says on the day he died, Zygier was distressed because his wife had demanded a divorce. Zygier called his mother in Melbourne, who alerted his lawyer she feared suicide but there was no jail record of the concerns.
blanche.clark@news.com.au
Prisoner X, by Rafael Epstein, Melbourne University Press, rrp $30