CAIRO: After being sentenced, in absentia, to life imprisonment by the Egyptian state security court, the identities of the Irish and Japanese nationals charged with spying for Israel remains a mystery.
Aside from the testimony of Mohammed Sayed Saber Ali, the Egyptian nuclear technician also sentenced to life imprisonment, no details of the background or whereabouts of Brian Peter and Shiro Izo have been made public.
Ali claims to have first met Irishman Brian Peter in Saudi Arabia, where the latter allegedly convinced him to meet again some months later.
A number of meetings are said to have been held in Hong Kong, where Peter introduced Ali to Japanese national, Shiro Izo.
There have been a number of conflicting reports within the Egyptian press as to the details of the initial contact made between the two parties, and the subsequent meetings.
Egyptian daily Rose El Yousef reported that Brian Peter had contacted Ali by telephone in Saudi Arabia, introducing himself as the representative of a multinational firm in the field of “astronomic research, and had offered him a job in the company.
Peter then introduced Ali to Shiro Izo in Hong Kong, where the two men tried to recruit him to work for Mossad, the Israeli Intelligence Agency.
However, in a video interview with popular Egyptian news website www.masrawy.com, Ali’s wife says that her husband told her that Peter and Izo were working for a Chinese computer company, and had asked Ali to set up a branch in Egypt.
Egypt’s refusal to release any details on the identity of either of the foreign nationals has further clouded the matter.
Ehab Bakir, chief of the Public Prosecutor Office’s International Cooperation division, declined to comment on the identity of Brian Peter, citing that he was “not allowed to give any information to the media.
Irish and Japanese authorities have both failed to find passports, or indeed any records, to confirm the existence of the accused.
“This follows a trawl of documentation initiated by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs stated. “The embassy in Cairo and the department will continue, however, to monitor the situation.
The Director of the Information and Culture Center at the Japanese embassy in Cairo, Hakiro Mori, told The Daily Star Egypt that Japanese officials were “upset that this incident had been so widely publicized when no evidence had been provided.
He said the embassy had been given no information by the Egyptian authorities, and said they would not be following up on the matter.
This is typical of “spy cases, said Said Aly, expert at Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, though that does not make it untrue.
“In these cloak and dagger cases, there is no logic, he said. “But if you are asking, does the case have merit — yes it does.
Israel has refuted all claims of recruiting any of the accused.
