Last update - 00:00 21/11/2006
Ex-council leader jailed for 34 months for contact with enemy
By Jack Khoury, Haaretz Correspondent
Haifa District Court on Monday sentenced the former head of a Galilee regional council to 34 months in jail for maintaining contact with Iranian agents.
Jirais Jirais, 57, from the town of Fassuta, also received one year's suspended sentence. He was convicted based on his own confession, as part of a plea bargain, that he had been in touch with undercover Iranian agents in Cyprus in 2004 and 2005. The charge of conspiring to pass information to the enemy, which appeared on the original indictment, was dropped.
Jirais fled Israel to Lebanon in 1970, after he was exposed as a member of a cell of the Palestinian Fatah. In Lebanon, he made the acquaintance of Hani Abdullah Matwali, who, the charge sheet states, later worked as an Iranian emissary.
He returned to Fassuta in 1996, and became head of the local council in 2001. In October 2003, he was defeated in race to become the permanent head of the council. After this time, he was primarily involved in writing opinion pieces and analysis for Arabic-language newspapers abroad.
In September 2004, Abdullah made telephone contact with Jirais, and proposed a meeting to discuss a joint research center in Cyprus. The indictment states that Iranian agents participated in the three meetings that took place between the two men from the end of 2004 to March 2005.
Police say Jirias told them he realized one of the men was an intelligence agent after the Iranian asked him to spend two days conducting research related to political parties and disputes within Israeli society - without expressing any interest in the research center.
The Shin Bet security agency claims the matter of monetary compensation for Jirias was discussed and that upon his return to Israel, he went about collecting academic articles on such subjects as the strategic decision-making process in Israel. He also joined the left-wing Meretz-Yahad party.
In the wake of the indictment, Meretz-Yahad issued the following statement: "Jirias's name is indeed registered among the 22,000 party members, but he is not at all active in the party or its institutions. The party trusts the security authorities and the judicial system to conduct a thorough investigation and trial in this serious case."
In the hearings on the plea bargain, the prosecution said that Jirais had confessed and at no point had caused serious damage to the security of the state. The prosecution also said that Jirais' arrest had halted any danger his actions may have caused.
Jirais' attorney said that since his arrest, the media had accused him of far more grievous espionage, which had hurt both Jirais and his family.
The attorney said that his trial had curtailed Jirais' public service and that he suffered from diabetes. He asked that the court also take into consideration that his client had expressed remorse.
Justices Joseph Elron, Ron Sokol and Kamel Sa'ab said in their ruling, "the prohibition against contact with a foreign contact is intended to prevent deterioration along the slippery slope and lead to graver crimes. As a result, the court is obligated to express the severity of making contact with foreign agents, even if in the end of the day the actual effect on state security was not large."