Spy for hire? Freed Israeli captive tells his tale
( 2004-01-30 09:05) (Agencies)
An Israeli businessman returned from three years of captivity in Lebanon Thursday to the joyous embrace of his family -- and the prospect of a grilling by the Shin Bet secret service.
Elhanan Tannenbaum was the odd man out as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stood at a Tel Aviv air base to honor three dead soldiers whose bodies also were repatriated in a prisoner swap with Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas.
Spirited away from the solemn state ceremony, Tannenbaum, a reserve artillery colonel, saw relatives before being taken away for medical checks. Good health confirmed, he was to be interrogated by Israel's Shin Bet domestic security service, a military source said.
A lawyer hired by Tannenbaum's family said he would also meet with the former captive as soon as possible.
In a Lebanese television interview on the eve of his release, the man whom Hizbollah accused of being an agent of Israel's Mossad spy agency described himself as an intelligence entrepreneur also out for personal gain.
Israeli media reports have alleged Tannenbaum was lured to the United Arab Emirates for a business deal and then either enticed or forced to travel to Beirut. His family has denied he was involved in any criminal activity.
"The reason I traveled to Lebanon, it could be said, was the navigator who fell captive, Ron Arad," Tannenbaum, 59, told Hizbollah's al-Manar television, referring to an Israeli airman missing since he bailed out on a mission over Lebanon in 1986.
"At the same time I stood to make something for myself, financially speaking," he said in Hebrew.
DISAVOWED
Israel disavowed Tannenbaum soon after Hizbollah announced his abduction in October 2000. He also said he worked alone.
"I tell you that I spoke with no one ahead of my trip, and therefore no one knew about the objective," Tannenbaum, 59, said in remarks broadcast before he was flown out of Beirut in a swap in which Israel released some 430 Arab prisoners.
Tannenbaum's son, noting his father's puffy features, newly gray hair and repeated remarks in praise of his "humanitarian" captors, accused Hizbollah of staging the interview for propaganda and torturing his father.
Mossad and the Shin Bet readily troll for -- and dispense with -- paid informers in the Arab world as required.
But these so-called foreign "assets" are a far cry from full-fledged Israeli agents who, according to sources, are jealously guarded by their agencies.
"It is extremely unlikely Mossad would so publicly discredit a bona-fide agent," an Israeli security source said, alluding to allegations of misdeeds by Tannenbaum. His children said the businessman had been deep in debt when he vanished.
"The intelligence community, in Israel as elsewhere, is small and intimate," the security source said. "Such treatment would severely harm morale."
The Shin Bet's recommendations will determine whether Tannenbaum will be tried on charges of illegally traveling to an enemy country -- which Sharon said last year was possible.
But whatever public ire exists at a man recovered in an asymmetrical prisoner trade that many Israelis believe will stoke Arab enmity could be offset by sympathy over his ordeal.
"We will probably end up letting Tannenbaum off with 'time served,"' a Justice Ministry source said.
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