Israel Lifts Secrecy, Confirms Arrest of Suspected Spy : Mideast: Iranian-born Jew has been jailed for two months for allegedly helping Tehran.

In an unusual lifting of the veil of secrecy surrounding espionage cases, the Israeli government confirmed Tuesday that it arrested an Israeli clothing merchant suspected of spying for Iran and has held him in jail for at least two months.

The suspect, Herzl Rad, 29, was charged in secret proceedings June 8 with espionage, initiating contact with foreign agents and helping an enemy in time of war. His closed trial began late Tuesday after a Jerusalem district court judge suddenly lifted part of her ban on disclosures regarding his case.

For two months, Rad’s family and court-appointed lawyer have been prohibited from speaking about his arrest. Court employees were made to sign an oath of secrecy, the violation of which is punishable by a year in jail. And journalists, subjected to government censorship on national security issues, were prevented from publishing the story.

The arrest was revealed Monday by the London-based Arabic weekly Al Wassat, and the published article was quoted by some Israeli media Tuesday--a means of circumventing government censorship.

Al Wassat reported that Rad was arrested in Turkey by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency and returned to Israel. Israeli officials denied this and said the information blackout was lifted to set the record straight.

The government asserts that Rad went to Turkey in early March to make contact with Iranian intelligence and offer his services. Israeli officials said he flew to Iran in April, where he was hired by Iranian intelligence to gather information on Israeli army bases in exchange for $10,000 paid to a German bank account.

Zion Amir, Rad’s court-appointed attorney, has entered an innocent plea on behalf of his client. Rad told reporters at the courthouse, “This is wrong what they’re doing to me.”

Amir told Israeli radio after the gag order was lifted that Rad, an Iranian-born Jew, was kidnaped in Turkey by Iranian secret service agents. He was flown to Iran for interrogation, where agents tried to force him to work for them.

He said Rad bears scars from three attempted suicides in an Iranian jail. Although Rad had been living in the United States for seven years, he returned to Israel after his release to tell police of his kidnaping, but instead was arrested.

For decades, the government has followed a policy of secrecy regarding the arrest and conviction of spies, arguing that information made public in these cases could harm national security. Until recently, it had the cooperation of the Israeli press; government ministers asked editors not to print stories and they complied.

In the most dramatic of such cases, convicted spy Avraham Marcus Klingberg, a scientist at the Nes Ziona research institute in chemical and biological warfare, spent 10 years in jail before his whereabouts were made public. He disappeared in 1983; but only after an Israeli Supreme Court order permitted publication of information on him was it publicized that he had been in Ashkelon Prison, serving a 20-year sentence as a Soviet spy. Prison guards thought his name was Avraham Greenberg.

“This is all part of the secret service folklore,” said Avigdor Feldman, who represented Klingberg. “They keep it secret to make the case more important, even when they have marginal people. Usually, the court is impressed with the whole atmosphere of secrecy, and that expresses itself in the [long] sentences.”

Feldman said the government would still prefer to keep these cases secret but that “the press is not willing to go along anymore.”

Feldman also represented Mordechai Vanunu in Israel’s most famous espionage case. Vanunu was captured in 1986 in Rome, where he had gone from London for the weekend with a woman who turned out to be an undercover Mossad agent. Vanunu was convicted of selling nuclear secrets to a British newspaper.