Elhanan Tennenbaum will not be indicted even if a polygraph test he is to take tomorrow indicates that he revealed to Hezbollah military secrets and sensitive information about a certain project, according to the settlement reached between Tennenbaum and the state on Friday.
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Haaretz has learned that Tennenbaum will be put on trial for security offenses only if it transpires that he was a Hezbollah agent before being taken captive by the group.
"We assume Tennenbaum disclosed information about his military service while in captivity, including details about the certain project," sources familiar with the settlement said. "Prisoners talk in captivity, and that's no crime. What interests the IDF is whether he began to gather military information before he left, intending to sell it to Hezbollah."
Tomorrow Tennenbaum will take the polygraph test, whose results will determine the future of the agreement with him. He will be asked whether he was a Hezbollah agent before his trip, and whether he revealed secrets during his interrogation. If he is found to be telling the truth, then according to the agreement reached Friday, he is expected to be released and will not be indicted for the criminal offenses he committed, and for which, in fact, he has already confessed. If the test indicates he is not telling the truth, he will be transferred to a Shin Bet interrogation facility for aggressive interrogation on suspicion of severe security offenses.
Tennenbaum has already taken one polygraph test and was found to be telling the truth in some issues, but not about his military service.
Sources close to Tennenbaum said the test results were "inconclusive," because he had a cold at the time. His interrogators today intend to focus on the real circumstances of his arrival in Lebanon. They will repeatedly ask Tennenbaum to give his version, asking every time "is this your final version?" Then they will formulate, together with Tennenbaum, the questions he will be asked in the polygraph test.
Tennenbaum gave his interrogators an amended version over the weekend after having reached the deal on Friday. The interrogators still do not believe him, and are hoping he fails the polygraph test. Some of them are furious over the agreement, accusing Shin Bet head Avi Dichter, Police Inspector General Shlomo Aharonishki, and Chief of Staff Major General Moshe Ya'alon of giving in to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's demand to be lenient with Tennenbaum and agree to a legal settlement.
The sources said the interrogators have accumulated enough evidence to indict Tennenbaum for serious offenses, such as using a forged passport, going to an Arab country without authorization, and being involved in a drug deal.
"That alone is enough to put him away for many years," the sources said. "What was the hurry to reach an agreement with him? If he told Hezbollah secrets, the enemy has already had this information for more than three years."
Tennenbaum repeatedly told his inquisitors, who come from the police, Shin Bet and Military Intelligence, that he was not a Hezbollah agent, did not disclose military secrets, and certainly did not tell them about a special secret project to which he was exposed during his military reserve service.
He did, however, confess to giving his captors insignificant information about his military service, during which time he served as a colonel and commanded an artillery brigade.
Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has said in the past that Tennenbaum confessed in his interrogation that he had participated in the Lebanon War in 1982 and commanded an artillery battery that fired at Beirut.
Tennenbaum told his interrogators that he received no payment from Hezbollah for the information, and to prove his cooperation, gave them the e-mail address Hezbollah had given him before his return to Israel. He said they asked him to act as an agent for them in Israel and contact them at that address, but he had no intention of doing so.
Tennenbaum was consistent in his answers about the security issues, but changed his version of the purpose of his trip over the weekend. Before reaching the agreement with the prosecution, he said he went to Dubai to obtain information about missing IAF navigator Ron Arad. In return, he hoped to be rewarded by Israel as well as to conduct private business. But in Dubai, he was kidnapped and taken to Lebanon against his will.
In his latest version, Tennenbaum admitted going to Dubai for a drug deal with his previous business partner Keis Obeid of Taibe. Obeid escaped to Lebanon, and is believed to be a Hezbollah agent who has initiated the kidnapping of Israelis and the handling of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in gathering information and carry out terrorist attacks.
Tennenbaum said before reaching the agreement that Obeid had given him a false passport with which he flew from Brussels to Dubai. From there he went to a business meeting at a villa where he was assaulted. He said he was the victim of a "sting" operation. They bound him and injected him with anaesthetics, and from that moment on, he remembers nothing.
Later he found himself in a room that he discovered was in Lebanon. He said he realized from hemorrhoid pains from which he was suffering that he had been put into a narrow trunk. He said he remembers nothing from the moment he was drugged, and cannot say how he was flown to Beirut. During the first four months of his captivity, he underwent aggressive interrogation. He was not physically tortured, but was subjected to heavy pressure. His interrogators, who wore masks and were continuously changed, questioned him in English, Arabic and Hebrew. He said he did not meet Nasrallah.
It has transpired that until a few days before his trip, Tennenbaum served in the reserves and was paid as though he were a colonel in regular service. Since Tennenbaum's trip to Lebanon, the army has been paying his family the monthly wages of a colonel.
The legal settlement was initiated by Tennenbaum's lawyer, Eli Zohar, some 10 days ago, after Tennenbaum had been branded a traitor in the media. He persuaded his client to reach a deal to avoid being indicted, fearing the wrath of Knesset members and public opinion. The attorney general, state prosecutor, police, and security establishment approved the deal to the chagrin of their subordinate interrogators.
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