A Danish tourist of Lebanese descent has been under arrest in Israel since January 6, as part of an investigation that came to light only yesterday, after the Petah Tikva Magistrate's Court lifted a gag order on the affair.
The police and the Shin Bet security service have also arrested two Israeli Arabs in the affair. All three detainees are suspected of committing unspecified security offenses.
The affair has elicited strong protests from the Danish government, which is angry about the fact that one of its citizens has been under arrest for more than two weeks without being given access to legal advice.
The court, which remanded the suspects for an additional five days yesterday, decided in a closed-door hearing to leave most of the gag order on the affair in place. However, it did allow the fact of the three arrests to be published.
The Danish Embassy was informed of the Dane's arrest soon after the man was taken into custody, and embassy officials even showed up for a court hearing on the case nine days ago. However, they were not allowed into the courtroom.
The next day, the Danish Foreign Ministry summoned Israel's ambassador to Copenhagen for a meeting and demanded explanations. It also demanded that Danish Embassy personnel in Israel be allowed to meet with the detainee.
But the Danish Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued yesterday that the man had still not been allowed to meet with the lawyer hired by the embassy to represent him.
The fact of the Dane's arrest was also published in the Danish press last Friday. Until now, however, the court-imposed gag order has prevented the Israeli media from citing these reports, which quoted a spokesman for the Danish Foreign Ministry as saying that he had no idea what the Danish citizen is suspected of having done.
In the past, terrorist organizations have occasionally tried to infiltrate operatives into Israel by recruiting foreign nationals who do not look Arab. One of the most well-known cases involved a British citizen of Lebanese descent, Jihad (Gerard) Shuman, who managed to smuggle explosives into the country on Hezbollah's behalf in 2001, but suffered a "work accident" as he was preparing the bomb in an East Jerusalem hotel, sustaining serious injuries in the resultant explosion. Another much-publicized case involved a German citizen, Stephan Smyrek, who was sent by Hezbollah on a reconnaissance mission aimed at locating venues for terror attacks. Both Smyrek and Shuman were released from jail last year in the context of Israel's prisoner exchange with Hezbollah.
