 Syrian nuclear site targeted by Israel in 2007 |
JERUSALEM – Israel this month quietly sentenced to three years imprisonment two Syrians living in the Jewish state accused of spying for Damascus, the government disclosed for publication.
The militants, Yusuf Salah Sham and Atta Farhat, were arrested July 29, 2007 – weeks before Israel’s air raid on a suspected nascent Syrian nuclear reactor being constructed with aid from North Korea. A total Israeli media blackout was imposed on the spy case.
In a court in Nazareth Sunday, the Syrians were found guilty of spying for an enemy country, including providing the Syrian military information on Israeli troop locations and military installations in the Golan Heights during the 2006 Lebanon war.
The complete details of the case – fully known to WND – are being held back by Israel’s military censor.
Aside from passing to Syria military information, Sham and Farhat also carried out various other tasks for Damascus officials, fully aware their actions were illegal.
Farhat and Sham were legal residents of Buqata, a largely Druze village in the Israeli Golan Heights. Farhat was arrested at his home during a nighttime police raid, according to the militant’s family, who spoke to WND.
The Golan Heights is strategic mountainous territory captured by the Jewish state after Syria twice used the terrain to attack Israel. It has a population of about 35,000 – approximately 18,000 Jewish residents and 17,000 Arabs, mostly Druze. The Arab residents retain their Syrian citizenship, but under Israeli law they can also sue for Israeli citizenship.
In 2006, WND broke the story Syria was in the early stages of forming a guerrilla group threatening attacks against Israeli positions and Jewish communities in the Golan Heights, according to security sources.
During a widely-circulated interview in August 2006 , a senior official from Syrian President Bashar Assad’s Baath party told WND the new guerrilla group, called the Syrian Committees for the Liberation of the Golan Heights, would launch “resistance operations” if Israel didn’t vacate the Golan.
One month later, a man identified as the leader of the new Committees gave an interview to state-run Iranian television.
Amos Yadlin, head of the Israel Defense Forces’ intelligence branch, told the Knesset in October 2006 that Syria is indeed forming a Hezbollah-like group.
Last February, the Committees for the Liberation of the Golan, whose senior leader met with WND in person, faxed a letter to Israeli news agencies claiming it was holding Guy Hever, an Israeli soldier who disappeared in the Golan in 1997. The Committees said it would release Hever in exchange for nine Syrians held in Israeli jails.
